RJA SUGUTUR IMMIDY PEDDA CHIKKA ROYAL YESHOWAN BAHADUR Vs. RAJA SUGUTUR IMMIDY SAMBA SADASIVA CHIKKA ROYAL YESHOWANT BAHADUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case we agree with the District Judge that the deed, Exhibit A, settling the provision to be made for the then zemindar s brother of Rs. 2,400 does not confer any heritable right. Mr. Krishnaswamy Aiyar has been unable to refer us to any words in the document which could bear that construction. What the document does, is to recognize the right of the junior member to an allowance of Rs. 100 according to the custom of the family for maintenance and to provide, more or less as a matter of favour, that he should have another Rs. 100 as well. The arrangement was come to, at the time when the zemindir and his brother were minors, by their mother. There is no ambiguity in the grant. In certain cases where the grant was not forthcoming, the fact that payment has been made for successive generations has been held to be evidence from which a permanent heritable grant might be presumed. Hut here we have the grant and as we read it, it is simply a grant for life. We do not think there is any analogy between a maintenance grant like this and the service grants with which some of the cases to which we have been referred deal.

(2.) Then it is said that the present Raja, who succeeded in 1911 by paying at the rate of Rs. 200 for about eighteen months, must be taken either to have confirmed the annuity at this rate for the life of the 1st plaintiff or to have contracted to pay him at this rate. The Raja was a very young man when he succeeded and we do not think that any inference either of confirmation or contract can be drawn from the fact that he paid this amount for such a short period.

(3.) The only other question we have to consider on this appeal is whether the District Judge was right in fixing the rate of maintenance at Rs. 100. The 1st plaintiff is now a somewhat remote relations of the present Raja and there are various other people entitled to maintenance ; and in a recent case it was held that so far as the rate of maintenance goes, remote relations are entitled to smaller amounts of maintenance than their predecessors, that is, Chettikulam Prasanna Venkatachella Reddiar v. Chettikulam Kumara Venkatachella Reddiar 4 Ind. Cas. 302 : 20 M.L.J. 394 : 7 M.L.T. 31.