MUNICIPALITY OF HUBLI Vs. RALLI BROTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decree of the First Class Subordinate Judge of Dharwar awarding Rs. 9,677, to the plaintiffs as compensation for injury done to their cotton by water which the defendants, in breach of their duty, allowed to escape on to the plaintiffs premises.

(2.) The defendants, the Municipality of Hubli, are a body corporate under the District Municipalities Act (III of 1901). By virtue of Section 50 of that Act property of various kinds is vested in them to be held and applied by them as trustees subject to the provisions and for the purposes of the Act and includes all public markets, tanks and works connected with or appertaining thereto, drains and culverts, and by Section 54 it is provided that it shall be the duty of every Municipality to make reasonable provision for inter alia the constructing altering and maintaining all public markets, drains, drainage-works, culverts, tanks, dams and the like.

(3.) In or about the year 1904, the Municipality of Hubli took steps to provide a Municipal Cotton Market. They selected for the purpose the site of a large and ancient tank known as Gulkawa s tank which had largely silted up. The southern boundary of the tank was an embankment. The tank received the drainage of the land to the north of it and at the southeastern corner was a weir for the discharge of surplus water. The tank area occupied about two-thirds of a quadrangular space of which the northern boundary was a public road known as the Station Road and the western boundary, another road running from north to south. The scheme of the Municipality was to drain the water coming to the culverts under the Station Road into a nalla on the eastern side of the quadrangular area and to conduct it into a small tank to be formed in the southeastern corner of that area whence the water would discharge eastwards over the old weir which it was proposed to deepen so as to allow of the passage of a larger body of water. This scheme would leave such part of the old tank as was not included in the small new tank free for reclamation as a cotton market.