JAGDEORAO Vs. MAHADEO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiff-appellant is the owner of a patti in the village of Nimgaon, and plot 152 in that village is included in that patti and belongs to him. This plot has never been cultivated; it adjoins the abadi, and the wajib-ul-arz records that the inhabitants have a right to stand their cattle there and the owners have no right to cultivate it or get it cultivated without setting apart another plot of equal area for the same purpose. The defendants own another patti in the same village, and they have been asserting, and still assert, a right, as owners of a quarter share in the whole village, to collect and appropriate a quarter share of the droppings of the cattle from plot 152. The plaintiff accordingly claimed a declaration that they were not entitled to any such share.

(2.) IN the first Court it was held that each cosharer in the village was entitled to a share in the manure, the decision resting mainly on a statement made in 1908 by the plaintiff's father Balaji in a suit between cosharers in the defendants' patti. In appeal in was held that, according to the wajib-ul-arz the, "manure is not the exclusive property of the landlords" and "anyone can remove the manure of the gothan." The decree of the lower Court dismissing the claim for a declaration and injunction was accordingly maintained.

(3.) BUT the concluding words of the same clause of the wajib-ul-arz show that even that general right does not exist. They are: Cattle-dung found in compounds or precincts belongs to the owners of such compounds or precincts.