SAKHARAM Vs. MT. KAUTIKABAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) 1. The plaintiffs claimed an order under Section 77, Registration Act, that a certain document should be registered. The suit has been dismissed in both the Courts below on the same ground as that on which registration was refused by the Sub-Registrar to whom the document was presented and by the District Registrar on appeal. The document is a relinquishment by a Hindu widow of the whole estate inherited from her husband in favour of his two reversionary heirs. As the estate includes sir land, it has been held that the document is a transfer of sir land (among other properties) without reservation of the cultivating rights in it which has not been sanctioned by a revenue officer, and, therefore, registration is forbidden by Section 49 (2), Tenancy Act 1920.

(2.) IT has been explained in Gauri Bai v. Gaya Bai A.I.R. 1927 Nag. 44, that a surrender or relinquishment is not a transfer; it is merely a throwing away of property for somebody else to pick up, and to do that no more requires permission from a revenue officer or anybody else than to commit suicide would. That the deed of relinquishment is executed in favour of certain specified persons makes no difference. That is merely a statement by the widow that they are the persons entitled to take the estate after she abandons it, and, if they are not, the fact that she, says they are will not help them. She retires and they come in on their own rights and not on any transfer to them by her. The correct view of the matter is indeed expressed in the document itself.

(3.) UNDER these circumstances no order in respect of costs is required here any more than it was required in either of the Courts below. Each of the learned Judges of those Courts has, however, ordered that the plaintiffs are to pay them all, and has fixed a pleader's fee of Rs. 72-12-0. Apart from the order being meaningless, that sum is obviously much too high for such a simple case; it is based on nothing but the fact that the value of the claim, for fixing the jurisdiction, was stated for one reason or another to be Rs. 2,910.