KADAGALLA VENKANNA Vs. INDUKURI LAKSHMIPATHI RAJU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff obtained a money decree against certain agraharamdars. On the 7 January, 1941, at a Court sale held in execution of the decree he purchased 13.65 acres of land owned.by the judgment-debtors under an inam granted in 1755. The first defendant was in possession of the land as the tenant and the Court could only give the plaintiff symbolical possession. This was given on the 30 April, 1942. The plaintiff filed the suit out of which the appeal arises on the 2nd October, 1943, to recover possession from the first defendant and defendants 2 to 4 who are his sub-tenants. The plaintiff alleged that he had obtained physical possession of the land from the first defendant and thereafter had granted to him a tenancy for one year from the beginning of May, 1942, on the condition that the first defendant vacated at the end of the year. The first defendant was to pay by way of rent three-fourths of the produce of the two crops raised on the land. He asked for a declaration of his title to the land, for the ejectment of the defendants, for the payment of Rs. 2,476 as arrears of rent for the year 1942-43, for mesne profits at the same rate and for the payment of Rs. 305 as damages for waste. The Subordinate Judge granted the plaintiff the declaration of title and a decree for possession; but he dismissed the further claims of the plaintiff. He disbelieved entirely the story of the oral lease. The first defendant died after the trial and his son has filed the appeal as his legal representative. He maintains that the Subordinate Judge erred in granting a decree for possession. The plaintiff has filed a memorandum of cross-objections which has been limited to the finding of the Subordinate Judge that the first defendant was not in arrears of rent and to the order with regard to costs.

(2.) It is common ground that unless the case falls within the Madras Estates Land (Amendment) Act, 1945, the decree for possession must stand. That Act inserted in Section 3 (a) (d) the following explanation: where a grant as an inam is expressed to be of a named village, the area which forms the subject" matter of the grant shall be deemed to be an estate notwithstanding that it did not include certain lands in the village of that name which have already been granted on service or other tenure or been reserved for communal purposes. Before the passing of this Act the law was that unless the evidence showed that the grant was of the whole village, it was not an estate within the meaning of the Madras Estates Land Act. In Ademma V/s. Satyadhyana Thirtha Swamivaru (1943) 2 M.L.J. 289, this Court held that where previous inams had been granted, the grant of the remaining lands in the village would not constitute a grant of the, whole village so as to make the land granted an estate. The object of the amending Act of 1945 was to ensure that where the grant was expressed to be of a village the lands granted would constitute an estate, notwithstanding that they did not include lands which had been already granted on service or other tenure or reserved for communal purposes. Subsection (2) of Section 2 gave the Act retrospective effect from the date on which the Madras Estates Land (Third Amendment) Act, 1936, came into force which was the 20 October, 1936.

(3.) In this case it is clear that the grant on which the first defendant relies did not cover the whole of the lands of the village. There were certain lands, to which we shall refer later, which were granted as service inams and certain lands described as waste lands, including the site of the village, which had not been the subject of any grant. The first defendant says that these facts do not affect his position because an examination of the inam register shows that the grant purported to be of the whole village. This interpretation of the inam register is not accepted by the plaintiff, who says that the record shows that two years after the grant of 1755 the zamindar made a grant of other lands in the village. The original grant has been lost and the only evidence with regard to it are the entries in the inam register. This shows that the total area of the village in 1859 when the Inam Commission was functioning was 669.74 acres, of which 47578 acres were the subject of the agraharam. grant on which the first defendant relies; 90.45 acres constituted " waste including site of village "; 69.03 acres were held under bhattavritti and devadayam inams and 34.48 acres had been allotted as " village service inams."