GODAVARTHI VENKANNA Vs. GODAVARTHI VENKATANARAYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant is the defendant in the action which has given rise to this second appeal. He has contested the plaintiff's claim in the three Courts below and in this Court with a persistency and vigour worthy of a better cause, but in this Court he has accepted some cf the findings below, as contest was no longer possible.

(2.) The plaintiff is the defendant's adopted son. He sued in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Narsapur for a decree for partition of the family estate. The defendant denied that he had ever adopted the plaintiff and pleaded that the property which the plaintiff claimed to be joint family property belonged to him in his own right. The Subordinate Judge held that the plaintiff had been adopted by the defendant and that the properties were joint family properties. The plaintiff averred in his plaint that there had been a partition between the defendant and his father but that subsequently there had been a re-union. The defendant said that this plea of re-union was not raised in the plaint and that this question should not be gone into. The Subordinate Judge held in favour of the plaintiff on all the issues raised by the defendant. On appeal the District Judge of West Godavari agreed with the findings of the Subordinate Judge and they were concurred in by Chandrasekhara Aiyar, J., who heard the second appeal. This appeal is from the judgment of the learned Judge.

(3.) In this Court, the finding that the plaintiff is the adopted son of the defendant has been accepted and it has also been accepted that the plaint was sufficiently widely drawn to raise the issue with regard to the factum of re-union. Two questions have however been strenuously argued here, namely (1) whether the re-union was lawful and (2) whether the properties settled by the defendant's father upon the defendant under a deed dated the 28 April, 1933, could be regarded as ancestral properties in the hands of the defendant. The Subordinate Judge held that if there had not been a reunion, the properties were ancestral and therefore the plaintiff was entitled to a share. The District Judge did not discuss this matter but the Subordinate Judge did and Chandrasekhara Aiyar, J., agreed with him.