P SUBRAHMANYA SOMAYAJULU Vs. YSEETHAYYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question to be decided in these appeals is whether the Civil Courts have jurisdiction to entertain the suits, the subject of the appeals, or whether their jurisdiction is ousted by the Madras Estates Land Act. The suits are between the inhabitants of the village of Arepalli and their immediate landlords, the agraharamdars of that village. If the agraharamdars are landlords within the meaning of Section 3(5) of the Madras Estates Land Act of 1908, the Civil Courts have no jurisdiction by reason of Section 189: "Landholder" means a person owning an estate or part thereof and includes every person entitled to collect the rents of the whole or any portion of the estate.

(2.) Whether this village is an "estate" or not depends on Section 3(2)(d) which includes in the definition: Any village of which the land revenue alone has been granted in inam to a person not owning the kudiwaram thereof.

(3.) It has been established that, where a grant or imam is a grant of both the landlord's and the tenant's rights in the land or, as they are called, the melwaram and the kudiwaram, the land is not an "estate;" but if the grant is of the landlord's rights or the melwaram alone, it is an "estate" so that the question to be decided is whether the grant is of the land itself or only of the right to the revenue from the land. There is no question in this case of the village being part of an estate and the question which has recently teen decided by a Full Bench of this Court in A.A.O. No. 121 of 1920 since reported as Jarugumilli Brahmayya V/s. Challaghali Achiraju 70 Ind. Cas. 615 : 43 M.L.J. 229 : (1922) M.W.N. 280 : 31 M.L.T. 91 : (1922) A.I.R. (M.) 373 : 45 M. 716 where it was held that a mirror inamdar who was granted both warams in respect of a small part of an estate was a landholder does not arise because the village in question has not been shown to be part of an estate. I am conscious of the absurdity if that case was rightly decided and the view which we are about to express in this cape is right, for the result is that a minor inamdar of a few acres would be a "landholder" while a major inamdar of a whole village would not. But such apparent inconsistencies are not surprising in view of the draftsmanship of the Statute.