CHIDAMBARA SIVAPRAKASA PANDARA SANNADHIGAL Vs. VEERAMA REDDI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE several consolidated appeals arise out of five suits brought by the plaintiff on July 27, 1904, in the Court of the District Munsif of Kulitalai in the Madras Presidency, in his capacity of head of a math, to eject the defendants from the lands in their occupation in the village of Karappudayanpatti, which he alleged belonged to his math. The defendants in the suit are cultivating tenants holding separate lands unconnected with each other. Accordingly, separate suits were brought against them.

(2.) THE plaintiff's case is that in the year 1743 the palegar of Thurayur, who owned the estate within which the village is situated, granted to the head of the math at the time the village in question; and that since then the successive holders of the office have been in possession and enjoyment not only of the right to the receipt of the dues payable by the tenants to the landlord, usually called in the Madras Presidency the melvaram, but also of the right to the actual occupancy of the lands technically called the kudivaram.

(3.) THE defendants in all the cases denied the right of the plaintiff to eject them from the lands in their occupation and under their cultivation; they alleged that he was only entitled to the melvaram and not to the kudivaram, and that they and their predecessors had held their lands from times immemorial and possessed and exercised the full rights of occupancy tenants to the knowledge of, and with the acquiescence of, the plaintiff and his predecessors. They further charged that the muchalkas produced and relied upon by the plaintiff were fabricated documents concocted for the purpose of destroying their old and hereditary right in the lands in their occupation.