HAJI BUKSH ELAHI Vs. DURLAV CHANDRA KAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are consolidated appeals from judgments and decrees of the High Court at Calcutta, which set aside two decrees of the Subordinate Judge in the second Court of 24 Pergunnahs, in Bengal. The question for determination by the Board is whether a certain sale of holdings for arrears of revenue, made to the respondent on the 16th March 1903, should be set aside.

(2.) On the 27th March 1902, the appellant purchased these holdings for Rs. 16,000 from a son of Bhagaban Chandra Banerji. By the Kabuliyat executed in the year 1874 by Bhagaban, who was thus the appellant s predecessor-in-title, it was stipulated as follows :-" I shall pay the said jumma in the Collectorate within the 28th day of June every year." The holdings were Government tenures in Dihi Panchana-gram in the District of Twenty-four Pergunnahs, and it is not disputed that such tenures came under the Act XI of 1859 by virtue of the provisions of Act VII of 1868. By Section 2 of the former Act an arrear of revenue was described thus :- If the whole or a portion of a kist or instalment of any mont of the era, according to which the settlement and kistbundi of any mahal have been regulated, be unpaid of the first of the following month of such era, the sum so remaining unpaid shall be considered as an arrear of revenue.

(3.) It seems accordingly to admit of dispute that, if this section applied, the rent payable under the Kabuliyat on the 28th June 1902 was not in arrear till the Ist of July thereafter. Statute having thus made clear what was to be considered an arrear of revenue) and at what date a past due payment was to be " considered as an arrear "of revenue," namely, on the first of the month following that in which the payment tell du(sic) further question is this, viz.:-Was this sale con-ducted in accordance with the procedure prescribed by statute (sic) the sales of property in respect of unpaid arrears of revenue?