VADRANAM RAMACHANDRAYYA Vs. MUDABHUSHI RANGANAYAKAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by the defendants against the decree and judgment of the Court of the Subordinate Judge, Guntur, decreeing O.S. No. 32 of 1951 filed by the respondent against the appellants for a declaration that she was the owner of the kudivaram rights in the suit land and that she was in possession of the same in the year 1947-48 and alternatively for recovery of possession. The plaintiff's case may be briefly stated. The plaint schedule land is situated in the village of Vaddamukkala. The plaintiff acquired the land under a will executed by her father in the year 1924 and, since then, she had been in possession of the same getting it cutivated by farm servants and hired labour. Since her father's death, her mother owned about 250 acres of land in that village. She had been getting her lands in the said village cultivated personally and had been supervising the cultivation of the plaintiff's lands. But, from the beginning of the year 1947, her husband took over management as her mother expressed unwillingness to look after the cultivation. The defendants were the farm servants of her mother and they were kept to watch the plaint schedule land in the year 1947. They gave up service later and trespassed into the suit land in the summer oi 1947. There were criminal proceedings and the matter was amicably settled when the defendants received Rs. 300 and agreed not to interfere with the suit land. After her husband got the land transplanted with the help of one Mopathi Subbayya, his farm servant and after the crop was reaped by him, the defendants formed themselves into an unlawful assembly in December, 1947, to dispossess the plaintiff by force and to implement their object they started proceedings under section 144, Criminal Procedure Code, alleging that they raised the crop and that the plaintiff's husband and others were trying to carry it away. The Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Ongole, held, on enquiry, that the defendants were in possession of the properties. The suit land does not form part of the estate and defendants were only farm servants and have no right to interfere with her possession. It was held in O.S. No. 3 of 1919 on the file of the Court of the Additional Subordinate Judge, Guntur, that the Agraharam is not an estate and that the tenants have no occupancy rights therein. Even if the village had become an estate under the Madras Estates Land Act, 1936, occupancy rights could not be acquired in the said land under section 8 (5) of the Estates Land Act. On these allegations, the suit was filed for a declaration that the plaintiff had kudivaram rights in the suit land and also for confirmation of her possession.

(2.) The defendants pleaded in their written statement that for 17 years past, the family of the defendants were in cultivation of the suit land as tenants and that previous to the defendants one Vadranam Ramayya was in possession as tenant. They alleged that the suit property was part of an estate and that they had occupancy rights therein. They denied that they agreed to give up their rights in the land by receiving Rs. 300 and that, if there was any writing to that effect, it must have been a forgery.

(3.) The learned Subordinate Judge, on a consideration of the entire evidence placed before him, held that the defendants were only farm servants and were not let into the suit land as tenants by the plaintiff. He found that the Vaddamukkala Agraharam was not an estate but he held that as the plaintiff obtained a decree in O.S. No. 3 of 1919 on the file of the Court of the Subordinate Judge, Guntur, on the basis that it was an estate, the defendants could not acquire occupancy rights under section 8 (5) of Estates Land Act; on those findings, he decreed the suit. Hence the appeal.