RAMA PRASAD Vs. RAM RAN BIJAY PRASAD SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal, which at first came before a Single Judge of this Court and was referred by him to a Division Bench, arises out of a suit for the rent of the years 1338, 1339, 1340 and twelve annas kist of 1341. The plaintiff is the proprietor of the Dumraon estate and the defendants are tenants having an occupancy holding directly under the estate without the intervention of any intermediate tenure. The proprietor, at the time when the rents of the first three years in suit accrued due, was Maharaja Bahadur Kesho Prashad Singh, who died in September 1933, and the estate, which is an impartible Raj, devolved on his elder son, the present plaintiff respondent. There was also a younger son, Kumar Biswanath Prashad Singh, who did not succeed to the estate, but became along with his elder brother, the heir to the personally acquired properties of the late Maharaja. The contention of the defendants was that rents due to the estate were such personal properties, and on the death of the Maharaja the persons entitled to those rents are the two brothers and not the elder brother only. Therefore it is said, the elder brother alone cannot sustain this suit for the sixteen annas rents. The younger brother has not been impleaded, nor has he intervened. The Munsif gave effect to the - contention of the defendants and gave the iplaintiff a decree for the rent of twelve annas kist of 1341 only; but on appeal the Subordinate Judge has decreed the entire suit, taking the view that Section 60, Ben. Ten. Act, precluded the defendants from resisting the suit of the plaintiff who is registered as sixteen annas proprietor by the plea that the rent is due to any third person.

(2.) The position taken up by the Subordinate Judge is supported by a very long series of authorities of which at this stage I may refer to Mt. Nand Kuer V/s. Jodhan Mahton A.I.R (1921) . Pat. 363 as the leading case of this Court. In this case it was held that the person registered as proprietor under the Bengal Land Registration Act, 1876, is entitled to recover rent from the tenants without any further proof of his title to it, and the tenants are not entitled to plead that the registered proprietor is not in fact the proprietor and that the rent is due to a third person. The contention of the defendants was based on Jagadamba Kumari v. Wazir Narain Singh A.I.R (1923) . P.C. 59 and Aparna Debi V/s. Shiba Prasad Singh A.I.R (1924) . Pat. 451. In the former of these cases, which was decided by their Lordships of the Privy Council, the dispute was between a widow, who was the personal heir of the late holder of an impartible estate, and a somewhat distant agnate who succeeded to the estate itself by primogeniture, and the decision was that certain moveable and other properties which had been self-acquired by the late Eaja were to be regarded as not incorpora-ted in the estate, and therefore should pass to his widow and not to the new holder of the estate.

(3.) In the Patna deoision a Bench of this Court applied the principle to rents which had accrued due during the lifetime of the last holder of an estate, and it was held that the person entitled to moneys due on aocount of rent of this kind was the widow, that is to say, the personal heir and not the agnate on whom the estate devolved. In neither of those cases was there any question of Section 60, Ben. Ten. Act. The latter case, it is true, dealt with certain rents, but they were not agricultural rents; they were rents and royalties in respect of coal mines, &c., and were governed by the Transfer of Property Act. It may be conceded that any realisations made by the new proprietor on account of rents accrued due in the lifetime of his father are not and will not be his exclusive property and that his brother is entitled to share in the enjoyment of any such receipts. But the decisions under Section 60, Ben. Ten. Act, make it quite clear that the registered proprietor of an estate is not barred f romtibtaining a full decree for the rents due to tip estate to the extent of the interest for wbjfeh he is recorded notwithstanding that he may in reality have title to a smaller interest or even to no interest at all. For instance, in Shyama Charan V/s. Mustarfizar Rahaman A.I.R (1918) . Cal. 492, in spite of a finding of fact by the Courts below that the plaintiff was not entitled to get his name registered as heir of Naba Chandra nor in respect of the third share of Earn Kant the High Court applied Sec. 60, held that the above plea could not be entertained in a rent suit and gave the plaintiff a full decree. It is not necessary to multiply the citation of decisions which are very numerous.