CHANBASAYYA PADADAYA Vs. CHENNAPGAVDA RAMCHANDRAGAVDA PATIL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff sued to recover possession of the plaint land and Rs. 900 as mesne profits for three years before suit from the defendants. The suit was filed in the Court of the Assistant Judge of Dharwar. The defendant sought to prove by parole evidence that the sale-deed which he had admitted having executed should be construed as a mortgage. This was a defence which he could set up if he was an agriculturist at the time of the transaction which was in 1903.

(2.) It is argued that the defendant could prove he was an agriculturist within the meaning of Section 2 of the Dekkhan Agriculturists Belief Act because the Act had been extended to the District of Dharwar before the execution of the sale-deed. When the Act was passed, Sections 1, 11, 56, 60 and 62 only were extended to the whole of British India. The rest of the Act extended only to the Districts of Poona, Satara, Sholapur and Ahmednagar, but might, from time to time, be extended wholly or in part by the Local Government to other Districts. In 1903 sections 2 and 20 of the Act were extended to Dharwar. Clearly the object of that extension was to enable agriculturists to obtain the benefit of Section 20 which enacts that the Court may at any time direct that the amount of any decree passed, whether before or after the Act comes into force, against an agriculturist, or the portion of the same which it. directs under Section 19 to be paid, shall be paid by instalments with or without interest. Section 19 had been repealed, and Section 20 ought to have been amended accordingly.

(3.) It has been argued then that the defendant can prove that he was an agriculturist at the date of the execution of the sale-deed, but that argument depends upon the definition of agriculturist, which expression under Section 2 must be taken to mean "a person who by himself or by his servants or by his tenants earns his livelihood wholly or principally by agriculture carried on within the limits of a district or part of a district to which this Act may for the time being extend, or who ordinarily engages personally in agricultural labour within those limits."