SHEO RAM Vs. RAM DATT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a second appeal by a single defendant, Sheo Ram, against the- concurring decrees of the two lower Courts. The plaintiffs brought a suit claiming a. declaration that they alone were in possession of certain numbers of sir plots. The defendants contested that these plots were the sir plots of the defendants and that they had been in possession for a long time. The lower Court finds as a matter of fact that the plaintiffs have been in possession of these plots from the time of an award in 1925. The first argument made by learned Counsel for the appellant was that this award required registration. Now, in the first place, a distinction is drawn by the Agra Tenancy Act, Act 3 of 1926, Section 5, between sir and proprietary rights, which. states: On the death of a sir holder his sir right shall devolve on the person who succeeds to his proprietary interest in the sir.

(2.) The rights therefore with which we are-concerned in the present suit are not the proprietary rights in the sir but only the rights of sir holders. It has further to be shown that the document of which registration is said to be necessary would affect the rights of the value of Rs. 100 or upwards to immovable property within the meaning of Section 17(1)(b), Registration Act. Appellant has not shown that the rights in question are valued at more than Rs. 100. The mere fact that the appellant has valued his appeal at Rs. 200 does not prove this. It is possible that the valuation entered may have been for the valuation of the proprietary rights and the sir rights taken together as there is nothing to show that the sir rights had been valued separately. The area in suit is 4 bighas 18 biswas. There is no reason to suppose that the sir rights in this area would be worth more than Rs. 100. But apart from those points, it is necessary for learned Counsel for the appellant to establish that an award given by arbitrators in accordance with a reference is a document for which registration is necessary.

(3.) I am asked to accept this proposition on the strength of a ruling which does not deal with an award at all. That ruling is Ram Gopal V/s. Tulshi Ram . This deals with a family arrangement in which there was an application for mutation of names and then a joint application stating that the parties had arrived at a compromise and asking for mutation to be made in the names of several parties in certain shares, was made. It was held that a binding family arrangement of this type can be made orally and if made orally no question of registration arises. If such an arrangement was reduced to the form of a document, registration, when the value is Rs. 100 or upwards, is necessary under Section 17, Registration Act. The proceedings of arbitrators however are judicial in their nature and there is no reason to suppose that the award of arbitrators is a document which would come under this ruling. In any case the Courts below have not treated the award as the sole basis of the claim of the plaintiffs, but the Courts have pointed out that the plaintiffs and the defendants are descended from a common ancestor Dayal Kurmi and that this dispute arose between the parties in regard to the possession of sir and that the dispute was settled in 1925 in that particular manner that the party, of which defendant-appellant is one, should hold seven plots of sir in list Ex. 9, and the party consisting of the plaintiffs should hold eight plots of sir marked Ex. 8, and that wince that date the parties have been holding their sir in accordance with that arrangement. I see no reason to hold that the document in question required registration.