RAJA YERLAGADDA MALLIK ARJUNA NAYAUDU Vs. RAJULAPATI SOMAYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from a decree, dated November 26, 1914, of the High Court at Madras, which affirmed a decree, dated November 22, 1912, of the Subordinate Judge of Masulipatam, by which the suit had been dismissed.

(2.) THE plaintiff is a zamindar, and he brought his suit on April 3, 1910, for a declaration that certain lands within his zamindari in the village of Ayyanki, in the Kistna District, of which the defendants were in possession, were his private lands within the meaning of the Madras Estates Land Act, 1908 (Madras Act I of 1908), in which the defendants had no right of occupancy, for the ejectment of the defendants from those lands, and for mesne profits. The defendants resisted the suit on the ground that the lands in question were ryoti lands within the meaning of the Act, and that they had in them rights of occupancy and were not liable to be ejected by the Civil Court.

(3.) THE lands in question do not satisfy the conditions mentioned in (a), (b) or (c), and are therefore not excluded from the statutory definition of ryoti lands. They were cultivable lands in the estate of the plaintiff, and had been held by the defendants for the purpose of agriculture under a muchalka, which will be presently referred to, and were not old waste lands. [The judgment then set out Section 6, Sub-section 1 of Madras Act I. of 1908, the explanation added thereto by Madras Act IV of 1909, and Section 185 of the former Acts. Madras Act I of 1908, Section 6, Sub-section 6(1):