SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA IN COUNCIL REPRESENTED BY THE COLLECTOR OF TINNEVELLY Vs. RAO BAHADUR PAUL APPASWAMI (DEAD)

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are second appeals by the Secretary of State for India against the decrees of the Courts below directing refund of water cess levied on the plaintiff's inam lands and restraining the defendant by injunction from levying water cess in future on those lands. All the three cases have heen dealt with together in the Lower Appellate Court and may similarly be dealt with here.

(2.) Though no document of grant is available, and indeed none seems to have been produced even before the inam commission there can be very little doubt that the inam grant was of the entire village and not of any portion thereof; reserving any other portion to the grantor. As pointed out by the Lower Appellate Court, it is so stated in column 13 of the Inam Register and such other evidence as we have as to the user of the tank by the inamdar in respect of fishery rights and so on and of repairs executed by him to the tank only goes to confirm the inference suggested by the entries in the Inam Register that it must have been a grant of the whole of the village and not of a part of the village.

(3.) The Inam Register refers to the nature of the Original grant as one on Kattukuthagai. This is defined in Wilson's Glossary as land "held in farm on a permanently fixed money rent", but the account in Mr. Venkaswami Rao's Manual of the Tanjore District is fuller. It is there pointed out that the underlying idea was that the payment should be by way of a consolidated assessment on the entire village area, with full liberty to the grantee in respect of the extent of land to be brought under the plough and the crops to be raised, without any enhancement of the demand. The Inam Register also contains a note in this case that the village was originally granted on the Kattukuthagai system, "in consequence of the ruined condition of the tank at the time of the grant". This circumstance, far from making it probable that the tank was reserved by the grantor certainly supports the contrary inference that the grantee was expected to restore the tank and make it efficient as a source of irrigation. This again is in conformity with the subsequent course of conduct, viz., that the inamdars have all along effected repairs to the tank, enjoyed the fishery lease thereof and otherwise treated themselves as owners of the tank. It is thus clear that even the considerations mentioned in Ambalavana Pandara Sannathi V/s. Secretary of State for India and Narayanaswamy Naidu v. Secretary of State for India (1912) 24 M.L.J. 36, in favour of an inference of reservation of the source of irrigation to the grantor do not exist here. On the other hand, the case will be governed by the principle recognised by Benson and Sundara Ayyar, JJ., in Secretary of State V/s. Kannepalli Venkataratnammah (1912) 23 M.L.J. 109.