PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR THE HINDU RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENTS Vs. THADIKONDA KOTESWARA RAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The principal question that has been argued in this batch of appeals is, whether the property in question in each case is held upon trust for the deity or whether the archakas possess in it any beneficial interest. Section 69 of the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act provides for payment of contributions by temples in order that certain expenses may be met. The amount of the contribution depends on the income of the temple and for the purpose of determining what the income is, the question becomes important under Section 70 whether a particular property belongs to the institution or not. The last mentioned section has since been amended, but the provision as it stood before the amendment, overns the present case. The contribution, the section enacted, was to be assessed on and notified to the trustee who would be bound to pay the amount within a certain prescribed time, from the funds of the temple concerned. " In default of his doing so ", the section went on to enact: The Court shall on the application of the President of the Board or Committee recover the amount as if a decree had been passed for the amount by the Court against the religious endowment concerned.

(2.) The result of the decisions which have construed Secs.69 and 70 is, that the assessments made under the sections stand upon the same footing, by some sort of fiction, as decrees of Civil Courts; from that it follows, that petitions filed by the Board to recover the amounts so assessed, partake of the character of execution petitions filed for enforcing such decrees, and are governed by the rules of law applicable to them. In the Guntur District, there seems to be numerous village temples and more than 200 execution petitions have been filed by the Board; in some cases, the question of the deity's title was put in issue even at the initial stage and decided by the Court; in the remaining cases, owing to reasons which it is unnecessary to state, the decision of the question was postponed, but when upon attachment of crops thearchakas preferred claims, the question of title came to be considered as upon claim petitions and in each case a finding as to the ownership of the property was given. It may be observed that the bulk of the cases was tried by Mr. Lobo, to whom we are indebted for the large amount of material which he has carefully collected and analysed in his exhaustive judgment. He was succeeded by Mr. Chandrasekhara Aiyar as District Judge, who heard a few of the cases and who, in one of the two judgments he delivered, has fully set out what he regards as the true principles governing this subject.

(3.) The question, as already stated, is whether the claim made by the archakas, on the particular facts of each case, is well founded. On their behalf, the argument has been put thus: that the properties were given to their ancestors subject to or burdened with the performance of certain services or in the alternative, that the gifts were annexed to the office of archaka, that is to say, were made to particular individuals for the time being filling that office. On the other hand, for the Board it is contended, that the property in each case was dedicated absolutely to the deity concerned. In other words, each side, taking its stand on the threefold classification adopted in