DAULATRAO MALOJIRAO Vs. GOVERNMENT OF BOMBAY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal and cross-appeal from the judgment dated July 31, 1940, of the First Class Subordinate Judge of Dharwar.

(2.) The plaintiff, who is the appellant in this Court, claims to be the saranjamdar of an estate of which his ancestors had been tenants-for-life for a great many years. The estate was formerly part of a larger saranjam estate known as the Gajendragad estate registered in the books of Government in the name of an elder branch of the appellant's family. In or about the year 1842 one of the saranjamdars of this elder branch appointed as manager of a part of the Gajendragad estate a certain kulkarni, who was the ancestor of respondent No. 2. Whether this appointment was made orally or in writing does not appear, and no documentary confirmation of it is forthcoming. However, there is no dispute between the parties that some arrangement was in fact made, nor is it disputed that in consideration of hereditary services to be rendered by the kulkarni and his descendants in managing part of the estate and collecting the rents and profits thereof the kulkarni and his descendants were to retain for their own use the rents and profits of a certain portion thereof being some sixty acres of land formerly part of Survey No. 83, but now known by Survey Nos. 121-122-123-124.

(3.) Between the years 1869 and 1891 the Gajendragad estate was in fact informally divided between the three branches of the appellant's ancestral family, and it fell to the lot of the appellant's father to enjoy as saranjamdar, though without Government recognition, that one- third of the Gajendragad estate in which was included the sixty acres now in dispute. In 1891 Government, though without recognition and it may be without knowledge of the informal division between the three branches of the family, passed the following resolution: It appears to Government that the whole Gajendragad Estate is a saranjam continu-able as hereditary in the fullest sense of the word as interpreted by the Court of Directors in paragraph 9 of their Despatch No. 27, dated December 12, 1855. It is continuable to all male legitimate descendants of the holder at the time of the British conquest; and should Government ever sanction an adoption the terms of sanction would be those applicable to saranjamdars. The property should be dealt with like other saranjams in the Political Department, In the event of the saranjam or any part of the original saranjam being included in the scheme for the revision of the Hyderabad-Bombay Frontier, the reversionary interest would have to be calculated, and the rights of the saranjamdar should be guarded as recognised by Government. The family of the saranjamdar should be made acquainted with this decision.