CHINNAN Vs. KONDAM NAIDU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These Second Appeals have arisen out of suits brought against the same two defendants. The plaintiffs in these suits are the tenants in a shortriam village called Talambur in the Chingleput Taluq. The plaintiff s case in each suit is that the shrotriam Inam comes under the definition of Estate in the Madras Estates Land Act, and the plaintiff is the occupancy tenant of the lands entered in the A schedule to the plaint and that the plaintiff is entitled to demand from the defendants a pattah containing the terms stated in the "model" pattah forming the B schedule to each plaint. The defence of the two defendants who are shrotriamdars, is that the plaintiffs have no occupancy rights, that the defendants own both the Melvaram and the Kudivaram rights in the lands in the plaint village, that the village is not an estate under the Madras Estates Land Act, that the provisions of that Act do not apply to the suit lands and that the plaintiffs are not therefore entitled to demand pattahs from the defendants. As regards also the terms to be entered in the pattahs, there was dispute between the plaintiffs and the defendants. The Sub-Collector of Chingleput decided the suits substantially in the plaintiffs favour, though in respect of the rents to be paid by the plaintiffs, he decided in favour of the defendants contention, namely, that the plaintiffs were bound to pay waram or share of produce (forty per cent of the produce) as rent and not money rents as contended by the plaintiffs. On appeal, the learned District Judge held that the defendants were not only Shrotriamdars but aiso Mirasidars of the village that while they owned the Melwaram of the village as Shrotriamdars they owned the Kudivaram as Mirasidars, that the plaintiffs had no occupancy right, that the village was not an Estate under Section 3, cl,(d) of the Estates Land Act because the persons to whom the land revenue was granted as Shrotriam Inam by the Government did own the Kudivaram thereof as Mirasidars and that hence the Madras Estates Land Act did not apply to the lands in the village and no suit could be brought under that Act by the tenants to enforce the grant of pattas. On these findings he reversed the Sub-Collector s decisions and dismissed the plaintiffs suits with costs. The plaintiffs have therefore brought these Second Appeals contending that the village is an "Estate" under the Madras Estates Land Act and that the plaintiffs have occupancy rights. I think the decision of these cases depends on the answer to the question whether, when the Government granted the Melvaram as Shrotriam Inam to the predecessors-in-title of the six defendants the grantees owned the Kudivaram in the village lands or whether there existed at that time tenants with occupancy rights who owned the Kudivaram in the lands in dispute.

(2.) These Second Appeals have been fully and ably argued by the learned vakils on both sides and we have been taken through not only the documentary evidence adduced by both parties, but even through much of the oral evidence. The Melvaram of the village seems to have been first granted as Poliagar service Inam by a former Government, probably the Nawab of Arcot, in the 17th century to a person whose family was known as Pothi Reddi family. The evidence further seems to show that Pothi Reddi Nayakan who became the poliagar was known as the Ekabogam Mirasidar of the village and hence must have owned at one time the Kudivaram right in all the village lands.

(3.) Now the Mirasi system in the Chingleput District began, according to the traditional authorities, by the act of a Chola king named Kulothunga, whose illegitimate son Adanda conquered the country round Canchipuram. The date of this conquest is variously given as between the eighth and twelfth centuries. The grantees of lands under the Chola king in Mirasi right were all Vellalas. It was intended that they should bring the lands in the villages which were mostly of poor quality under cultivation through their own exertions or through the exertions of Payakaris who were to be settled by the Mirasidars, known in the Hindu Period as Kaniakshikar. The Mirasidar was not expected himself to cultivate the entire area of cultivable lands in the village. The Payakaris whom he introduced for cultivation purposes, if they permanently settled in the village and if they and their descendants enjoyed the same lands as tenants for about 100 years, became by custom and by Hindu Law, Ullkudi Payakaris with permanent rights of occupancy, that is, they acquired what may be called in one sense the Kudivaram right in the lands in their holding. Though they thus ac quired permanent occupancy rights, the original Mirasidar who had obtained,the Kudivaram from the Government was entitled to demand from the Ullkudi Kudivaramdar some Swatantrams including what was called Thunduvaram, the amount of which swathantrams was a certain proportion of the gross produce raised by the Ullkudi tenant. These swathantrams might be looked upon as a fraction of the fruits of the Kudivaram right, which fraction can never be lost by the Mirasidar. Forty per cent, being the Melvaram share and sixty per cent, the Kudivaram share, the Ullkudi Kudivaramdar did not take the whole sixty per cent for himself but gave out of it a percentage as swathantrams to the Mirasidar even after he, the Ullkudi, had obtained the permanent occupancy right in the lands. The above is the conclusion which I have arrived at after anxious consideration of the arguments on both sides and after perusal of the passages in Huddle-stone s papers on Mirasi rights and Crole s Chingleput District Manual and other authorities. (See Huddlestone Mirasi papers, pages 176, 214, 372, 379 to 384, 395 and 45; Chingleput District Manual, pages 110,138, 312, 213, 300 to 193, 394 and 395).