SHANKARRAO DAGADUJIRAO JAHAGIRDAR Vs. SAMBHU NATHU PATIL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case six appeals have been consolidated. They are brought from a decision of the High Court of Bombay dated 4 October 1934, in suits by the appellant for ejectment of the respondents from the lands of their tenancies under him. In each case the basis of the claim was that the tenancy is an annual tenancy determinable at the end of the agricultural year, namely 31 March, upon three months' notice. The lands in question are arable land in the inam village of Khed Digar. This village is in the Shahada Taluka of the West Khandesh District in the Presidency of Bombay, and lies upon the extreme northern boundary of the Deccan where it abuts upon the Barwani State. The total area of the village would appear to be under 1400 acres and the population about 400 persons of whom a little more than a quarter are Bhils. The appellant is the inamdar of the village and traces his title back to an inam grant by the Maratha Ruler in 1798. This title was confirmed by the British Government in 1843 and in 1880 a sanad was granted by the Government of Bombay to the appellant's father showing that, subject to the deduction of some 120 acres alienated by grants of earlier date than 1798, the village was the grantee's permanent heritable property held subject to payment to Government of a judi or quit rent of Rs.13 per annum, and nazarana of Rs. 14-8-0. in all Rs.27-8-0. It has been contended for the respondents that the appellant is not shown to be a grantee of the village but only of a certain share in the revenue of the village but the finding of the High Court that he is grantee of the soil appears to their Lordships to be so well founded that it is unnecessary to discuss the question afresh.

(2.) Each of the six suits was brought against a single defendant as sole tenant but this appeal has been contested by one only of the six defendants, namely by the respondent Sambhu Nathu (herein called the first respondent),who was in possession of a large area of 770 acres. He was sued in the Court of the First Class Subordinate Judge of Dhulia on 26 June 1928, and he succeeded in that Court upon the ground (which their Lordships think to be erroneous) that the appellant had no title to the soil but only to the revenue of the village. From this decision the appeal to the High Court was a first appeal in which questions of fact as well as of law were open. The other respondents were sued in the Court of the Second Class Subordinate Judge at Nandurbar on 6 July 1928. These suits were decreed and ejectment ordered by the trial Judge (20 March 1930) and on first appeal the District Judge affirmed this decision (8 January 1931). The High Court dealt with all six cases by one judgment and dismissed the suits (4 October 1934). The appellant's father had succeeded to the inam by 1857. He lived till 1904 and was succeeded by the appellant who was then aged eight years. The Collector of West Khandesh was appointed by the District Judge as the appellant's guardian in 1905 and acted as such till the appellant came of age in 1917.

(3.) Such documentary evidence as there is of the history of the agricultural tenancies in this village has reference almost entirely to the lifetime of the appellant's father. It consists mainly of documents produced by the appellant to show that the tenancies in question cannot be traced back beyond a certain number of years. The result of the documents in this respect has been found by the High Court to be as follows : that Sambhu Nathu, who has acquired an interest in a large part of the village through purchases of the rights of other tenants made from time to time by his father and by himself, has shown that one of his tenancies goes back to 1855-56 and another to 1856-57, but that he cannot be held to have traced his other tenancies back to a period earlier than the year 1892; and the tenancies of the other respondents likewise are traced only to 1892. By a village ledger (khatavani) for the year 1856 it would appear that the lands in the village under cultivation in that year were measured as 15 ploughs (auts) and no more. (It is agreed that the original meaning of aut as a measure of land is as much as could be cultivated by means of a plough with two bullocks.) From other documents it would appear that in 1851, 1852, 1859-1860 the village was deserted (ujad). The tenants at this period would seem all to have been Bhils and to have possessed a single plough each. By the late seventies of last century the village had become one of 50 ploughs, and by the early nineties the number of ploughs had increased to about 80, a number which has never been exceeded. Before the year 1890 the payment made by the tenants to the inamdar at a time when the tenants were Bhils was 4 rupees per plough. A few persons not Bhils were charged 6 rupees per plough in later years, but by 1890 the amount obtained per plough by the inamdar was 12 rupees and this was the position at the time when the appellant succeeded in 1904. It is plain that all the tenancies now in question began under a system of autbandi ; and the question whether any of them have permanent rights is rendered difficult of solution by the fact that evidence of the nature or character of the autbandi system of cultivation as it has obtained in this village is neither plentiful nor clear. Their Lordships are not entitled or prepared to assume that it had any necessary similarity to practices which may go by similar names in other parts of India, nor do they know whether it is a system in general use in the Presidency of Bombay. It may originally have been-what the learned Subordinate Judge at Dhulia thought it - a system of assessment to land revenue, or a mere method of measurement and not a kind of tenancy at all. What it became in the village of Khed is the relevant question-a somewhat special question to which the answer must in large measure depend upon what was done and permitted in the time of the appellant's father.