BOBBILI SRIRAMAMURTHY Vs. BATCHU DHANRAJU AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE appeals have been preferred by the two Defendants from the judgment and decree of the Subordinate Judge, Amalapuram, In O. S. No. 90 of 1949, a suit in ejectment brought in respect of a coconut garden measuring about four acres in extent in the village of Krapa. The Plaintiffs are the joint landholders of the village of Krapa, which is admittedly an estate as defined in the -Madras Estates Land Act. The first Defendant was employed in their service as a tanedar from 1932 to 1947, and the 2nd Defendant is his brother.

(2.) SRI D.P. Narayana Rao, the learned Counsel for the 2nd Defendant has no criticism to oiler against the appreciation of the evidence by the learned Subordinate Judge and challenges the finding that the suit land is private land on two grounds. The first contention is that the Plaintiffs have not proved that the landholder himself cultivated the suit land for a continuous period of 12 years immediately before the commencement of the Madras Estates Land Act in 1908, and that the land therefore does not come within the definition of 'private land' in Clause (a), of Section 3(10) of the Act which applies to this estate.

(3.) IT is manifest from the word 'includes' which precedes the latter portion of the definition that land which has been cultivated as private land by the landholder himself by his own servants or by hired labour with his own or hired stock for a continuous period of 12 years immediately before the Act is only one of the categories of private land. It is not necessary that in every case of land claimed to be private land the landholder -should show that he has himself cultivated it for a continuous period of 12 years until 1908.