PRESIDENT, TALUK BOARD, RAMNAD Vs. VAVARU AMBALAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ALTHOUGH the plaint asserts that defendants were entrapping also water which flowed on their lands from adjoining lands, the right claimed by the defendants in their written statement is limited to the right to collect and use the rain-water which falls on their own fields. We are not sure that the Trial Court and the lower Appellate Court have exactly appreciated this, but we think that their finding is that the defendants have put ridges all round their own fields and are entrapping only the water which falls as rain-water on the lands. This finding we must accept. That is also accepted by the learned Judge from whose decision these appeals are preferred, who says: "What the defendants have done is to catch rain-water as it fell on their lands. The landlord is not entitled to the rain-water which falls on a tenant's land till the water leaves the tenant's land." The question, therefore, is whether in the case of lands which are cultivated purely by rain-water which falls on them they should be charged "sarasari," On this basis no question of interruption of water which would otherwise How to the tank arises, and the learned Judge's decision is correct. The appeals are dismissed with costs.