SRI RAJAH RAMA RAO Vs. RAJAH OF PITTAPUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff is the son of an adopted son of the late Rajah of Pittapur, and he sues the defendant, the present Rajah of Pittapur, for maintenance.At the time that the suit was raised the father of the plaintiff was alive, but pending the suit he died. The Raj of Pittapur is an im- partible zemindari, and was devised by will to the defendant, who was described in the will as the aurasa son of the late Rajah born of one of his wives, three years after the adoption of the plaintiff s father. The plaintiff s father contested the right of the defendant to the Raj, and alleged that he was not the legitimate son of the late Rajah. In that suit the Sub-ordinate Judge decided that the defendant was not legitimate and that the Raj was inalienable The judgment was reversed and the case decided in favour of the defendant by the Court of Appeal and by this Board, who, without deciding as to the legitimacy of the defendant, held that in accordance with what had been laid down by this Board in the case of Rani Sartaj Kuari v. Rani Deoraj Kuari (1885) L.R. 15 I.A. 51 the zemindari of Pittapur, being impartible, there was no right in the plaintiff to quarrel with tha alienation made by the will of the late Rajah.

(2.) The defendant in the present case resists the claim on the ground that no legal basis for the claim is alleged. The plaintiff did not attempt to prove that there was any custom affecting this particular zemindari which enjoined the making of grants of maintenance to any persons, nor did he put his case on any claim resting on relationship, a relationship which, following his father s allegation, he did not allow, existed, but he rested his case on what he alleged was the general law, viz that by birth he had a right to maintenance out of the property constituting the Raj, which right followed the property into the hands of a third party. The learned Judge of the Subordinate Court gave judgment in favour of the plaintiff for maintenance and arrears. This judgment was reversed by the Court of Appeal, who dismissed the case. The ground on which the learned Subordinate Judge proceeded was shortly this : He considered that the zemindari was joint family property, only with the peculiar quality that it was impartible. Being joint family property, the right which accrues to every junior member (and a grand-son is such a junior member) in the case of the ordinary joint family under the Mitakshara law exists also in this case. The learned Judges of the Court of Appeal held that after the decisions in Rani Sartaj Kuari v. Rani Deoraj Kuari and Sri Rajah Rao Venkata Surya Mahipati Rama Krishna Rao Bahadur v. Court of Wards (1899) L.R. 26 I.A. 83 : 1 Bom. L.R. 277, it was impossible to base the plaintiff s right to maintenance on any right of coparcenary accruing by birth, and that the case as put was based on no other ground.

(3.) It is beyond doubt that the decisions in the Madras Courts prior to the case of Rani Sartaj Kuari v. Rani Deoraj Kuari embodied the theory that there was joint property in an impartible zemindari, which only fell short of coparcenary because, by custom, partition was inadmissible. It is needless to cite or examine the authorities, as their Lordships do not apprehend that there is any doubt as to this statement being correct. It will be sufficient to quoto a fragment of the decision of the Court of Appeal in that case itself:- It must be conceded that the complete rights of ordinary copareenary ship in the other members of the family to the extent of joint enjoyment and the capacity to demand partition are merged in-or perhaps, to use a more correct term, subordinated to-the title of the individual member to the incumbency of the estate, but the contingency of survivorship remains along with the right to maintenance in a sufficiently substantial form to preserve for them a kind of dormant co- ownership.