SRIRAMAMURTY Vs. VENKATASUBBARAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition for revision of the order of the District Munsif of Vijayawada in I.A. No. 2978 of 1953 in O.S. No. 174 of 1952 directing P. Venkata Subba Rao to be made a party defendant to the suit in spite of the opposition of the plaintiff, Nidumukkala Sreeramamurthy. The facts are shortly these: The plaintiff's father had instituted O.S. No. 265 of 1945 on the file of the District Munsif's Court, Bezwada against Sri Kanyakaparameswari Anna Satram Committee, represented by its 35 members as defendants, for an injunction restraining the defendants from closing certain windows and obstructing or diminishing the access of light and air through those windows to the plaintiff's house and for a mandatory injunction to pull down the obstruction erected by the defendants above the level of the ancient lights claimed by the plaintiff in that suit. There was a compromise in the suit entered into between the plaintiff's father, Nidumukkala Subbarayudu and Gopu Seshavataram, the 1st defendant in that suit and the president of Sri Kanyaka Parameswari Anna Satram Committee. According to the plaintiff in the present suit, the Anna Satram Committee was again trying to cause obstruction to the passage of light and air through the windows to the plaintiff's rooms, contrary to the compromise decree that had been passed in O.S. No. 265 of 1945. The plaintiff in the present suit prayed for a mandatory injunction directing the defendants to pull down the obstructions to the windows and other reliefs. The first defendant to the present suit is Sri Kanyaka Parameswari Anna Satram Committee represented by the President, Gopu Seshavataram.

(2.) The 2nd and 3rd defendants are Gopu Seshavataram and Batchu Venkateswarlu, who were impleaded not only as office bearers representing the Anna Satram Committee but also in their individual capacity according to paragraph 3 of the plaint. At the time when the compromise in O. S. No. 265 of 1945 was entered into, the Anna Satram Committee was an unregistered society and therefore all the members of the Committee were defendants to that suit. It has since become a registered society of which Gopu Seshavataram, the 2nd defendant, is the President and Datchu Venkateswariu, the 3rd defendant, is the Secretary.

(3.) It was evidently for this reason that the other members of the committee of management of the Anna Satram were not impleaded as defendants to the present suit. In the written statement originally filed by the defendants, the plea was not taken that the compromise decree in O. S. No. 265 of 1945 was not binding on the Anna Satram Committee, the 1st defendant, by reason of the fact that the compromise was entered into between the plaintiff in O. S. No 265 of 1945 and Gopu Seshavataram alone without the other members of the Committee, who were defendants to that suir, being parties to the compromise. At this stage, P. Venkata Subba Rao and C. Ramakrishnayya, two of the members of the committee of the first defendanr applied in I. A. No. 2978 of 1953 to be made parties-defendants to the suit in order that they might raise the plea that the compromise entered into between the plaintiff and Gopu Seshavataram alone in O. S. No. 265 of 1945 was not binding upon the Anna Satram Committee impleaded as the 1st defendant in the present suit. The learned District Munsif considered it propet to bting on record the first petitioner, P. Venkata Subba Rao as a party-defendant to the suit and allow him to raise the plea which the defendants had not taken. P. Venkata Subba Rao was brought on record as a defendant in order that the interests of the trust might be safeguarded and the necessary defence to the suit might be raised.