SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA IN COUNCIL REPRESENTED BY THE COLLECTOR OF TRICHINOPOLY Vs. MUTHUVEERAMA REDDI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff alleged that a certain Calengula which regulated the supply of water for irrigation to his land had fallen into disrepair and the Government officers being bound to repair it failed to do so. In, consequence of this failure, his land received no water and his crop was lost. He sued for compensation to the extent of the value of the crop which but for the failure of the water-supply he might have got.

(2.) Both Courts below have considered the question whether the plaintiff has a cause of action against the Government and though the written statement does not, distinctly raise this question, we have dealt with it. In the circumstances, we are of opinion that the District Munsif was right and that the Government is not under an obligation with regard to each individual ryot to repair irrigation works whenever they require repair. There is no case, so far as we know in which a claim like the present has ever been made in India, whether against the Government or against a zamindar, though opportunities for such claims have been sufficiently frequent ever since a system of irrigation works was inaugurated in the country.

(3.) The Courts in this Presidency have held that a ryot is entitled to prevent the Government from doing any act resulting in a material diminution of the usual supply of water for irrigation to his land, but it has never yet been held that an action will lie for mere failure to repair, when repair is required to enable the ryot to receive the usual supply. For the respondent reliance is placed on Madras Railway Co. V/s. Zamindars of Carvatenagaram 1 I.A. 364 : 14 B.L.R. 209 : 22 W.R. 279 but that case does not help him. It may very wall be--it is a question which we need not decide--that the Government when handing over large tracts of the country to zamindar at the Permanent Settlement laid upon them an obligation to preserve and repair the irrigation works handed over to them at the same time, and consequently, that there may lie on a zamindar an obligation more onerous than any that is upon the Government and that what is discretionary in the Government has been made by the Government obligatory in the cease of the zamindar. But, however that be, we have to remember that what the Privy Council had to decide was not a question as to the extent of the obligation if any to, maintain the works, but a question whether the rule laid down by the House of Lords in Fletcher v. Rylands L.R. 3 H.L. 330 could properly be applied so as to make a zamindar liable for damage done by the breaching of an irrigation tank maintained by him. In discussing this question their Lordships observe that the Government of India have undertaken the public duty of maintaining what may be called a national system of irrigation essential to the welfare of a large portion of the population, and that this public duty has in soma cases devolved upon zamindars, who cannot do away with the irrigation works in which many persons are interested, but are charged by Indian Law by reason of their tenure with the duty of preserving and repairing them. These considerations are advanced to demonstrate the difference between the position of a zamindar and that of the defendants in Fletcher v. Rylands L.R. 3 H.L. 330. That is to say because the zamindars are under an obligation to preserve and repair these tanks as a part of the public duty undertaken by the Government, they cannot be held liable for damage caused by the accidental destruction of one of those tanks. The zamindar's position is further likened by their Lordships to that of a person or corporation on whom statutory powers are conferred and statutory duties imposed.