RAMNATH SINGH Vs. DAWAS SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the plaintiffs against concurrent decisions of the Courts below. The appeal arises out of a suit for assessment of rent on two plots of homeatead land which the defendant hold under the plaintiffs otherwise than as parti of an agricultural holding which the defendants also hold under the plaintiffs. In the record of rights in the column describing the incidents of the tenancy of these homestead lands the entry is belagan, Both Courts have agreed in holding that the plaintiffs ace not entitled so have rent assessed on these two plots, because they are held free of rent. In appeal the learned advocate for the plaintiff appellants challenges this decision basing his contention on the well-known decision of the Privy Council in Jagdeo Narain Singh v. Baldeo Singh, 2 Pat. 38 : (A. I. R. (9) 1922 P. C. 272). The learned advocate contends that the Privy Council have laid it down as a general rule that whenever a laud within the ambit of a zammdari is assessed to revenue any one claiming to hold the land free of rent has the onus of doing so upon him, and he does not discharge this onus merely by showing that there is as only is the record of rights describing the land as held belagan. It is true that at one time it was conceded that this was the meaning of the deoision of the Privy Council in Jagdeo Narain Singh's case, 2 Pat. 33 : (A.I.R. (9) 1922 P. c. 272) and that decision was applied without question in Sameshwar Singh v. Sakhawat Ali, 17 P.l.t. 819 : (A. I. R. (24) 1937 Pat. 96). There ware two other Division Banch cages, however, in which the view held was that the Privy Council did not intend to go as far as it wag thought that they had gone. These two cases are Stonewigg v. Kameshwar Narayan Singh, 11 P.L.T. 444 : (A.I.R. (10) 1923 pat. 340) and Jodha Sahu v. Tirbena, Sahu, 11 P. L T. 468 : (A.I.R. (16) 1929 Pat. 748). Then again in Surput Singh v. Bhupendra Narayan Singh, 16 Pat. 105 : (A. I. R. (24) 1937 Pat. 165) it was pointed out that the statutory presumption of correctness attaching to an entry in the record of rights cannot be rebutted by another presumption under the general law, and that the decision of the Privy Council in Jagdeo Narain Singh's case, 2 Pat. 38 :(A.T.R. (9) 1932 P.C. 272) applied with reference to a claim by a person who had been entered in the record of rights as a malikanadar that he was entitled to hold his land free of rent. It appears that there are three Division Benches of this Court which have taken the view that the decision in Jagdeo Narain Singh's case, 2 Pat. 38 : (A.i.r. (9) 1922 P.c. 272) does not mean that the presumption of correctness attaching to record of rights is rebutted by showing that the land in respect of which rent is claimed or in respect of which assessment is claimed lisa in the plaintiffs' zamindari.

(2.) AS the present case comes from the diatrict of Saran, I have looked up the Settlement Report of the last settlement, 1893 to 1901, to ascertain in what same the Settlement Officer used the word "beligan" in respect of homestead land. In para. 133 at p. 44 of the Report the Settlement Officer says :