SHRI BALA MAHARAJ Vs. SAKHARAM VENKATESH JOSHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff, now appellant before us, filed this suit as-Inamdar of Badkundri to recover from the defendants the difference between the revised survey assessment and the Local Fund Cess on Survey No. 45 of Badkundri and the assessment actually paid by the-defendants for six years from 1916-1921 with interest and costs.

(2.) The defendants ancestors had been entered as khatedars of Survey No. 45 since 1843. Although the assessment at that time was Rs. 16-8-0, it is admitted that from 1843 to the present day the same amount of rent, viz. Rs. 2-12-0, had always been paid. A Government survey of the land took place about 1887 and the rates according to that survey were introduced in 1903, whereby the assessment on the suit land became Rs. 17. The survey rates were again revised in 1917, and the assessment was raised to Rs. 21-14-0. The defendants not having any grant of the land ensuring them possession on payment of the annual rent of Rs. 2-12-0, would be liable to have their rent raised, at any rate, up to the amount of the assessment at the Survey Settlement.

(3.) But against the claim of the plaintiff for such assessment, the defendant pleaded that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover anything more than Rs. 2-12-0 which was a customary rent which had been recovered in previous years by the plaintiff and his ancestors from time immemorial, and that the plaintiff was not entitled to enhance the rent as sought. The defendants pleaded that they had denied, to plaintiff's knowledge, his right to recover from them anything more than Rs. 2-12-0 in respect of the Suit land, and that the plaintiff having failed to gate his right to recover higher rent as per survey assessment recognized within twelve years before suit, the suit was barred.