ABDUL LATIF Vs. MANSINGHRAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE main point raised in this appeal is whether by the Sanad of 1872 Syed Ghulam Mohiuddin was granted an estate which ho had power to alienate. The recommendation of the Resident and the reasons therefor are clear from the entries in Ex. P-5, and it is not contested that the Viceroy and Governor General in Council approved and confirmed the recommendation of the Resident. Mouza Khamkhed was received within the jurisdiction of the assigned territory under the re-adjustment treaty of 1860 A.D. It was attached pending institution of any claim. No claimant put himself forward, but an old religious recluse was discovered to be the owner of the village. His claim was supported by a sanad which showed that his ancestor had held another village for expenses to be incurred in feeding travelling fakirs and had been given mouza Khamkhed in exchange. The investigating officer proposed that the claim of the son of this recluse should be upheld tinder Rule 4 of the inam rules, provided that the validity of the sanad was proved: if the validity was not proved, he considered that on the score of long possession the claimant should be given a life-estate in the village.

(2.) RULE 4 of the rules for the settlement of jagir and inam claims refers to inams given for religious and charitable ob-lecfs, and states that these should be continued to the present holders and their successors so long as the service continued to be performed according to the conditions of the grant. The commissioner agreed that the sanad required confirmation by the Nizam's Government. But he stated: In any pass I would uphold it, if upheld at all under Rule 5, not under Rule 4. The original object of the grant may have been the feeding of mendicants, but this object is scarcely of the palpable solid character" which we can endow in perpetuity on condition of service, and I myself believe that those lucky claimants could readily agree to pay a quit-rent of one-fourth.

(3.) NOW Rule 5 of the inam rules refers to personal or subistence grants. Clause 2 states that in the case of such grants, if the present incumbent is a descendant of the original grantee, the inam will be continued to him hereditarily subject to certain conditions: the conditions with which I am concerned are that alienation was prohibited and the inam escheated to Government on the failure of proper heirs. But, as Clause 3 states, an option will be given to the inamdar to convert his restricted tenure into a freehold one, with full powers of alienation by consenting to the payment of an annual quit-rent of one-eighth, one-fourth or one-half of the estimated assessment: the rate of quit-rent to be charged defended on the likelihood of the inamdar having heirs at the time of his death; and it is remarked that this quit-rent represented a compromise for the right of reversion possessed by Government.