PARSOTAM GIR Vs. NARBADA GIR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from a decree of the High Court at Allahabad. The plaintiff Mahant Nepal Gir, who is now represented by the appellant, sued for recovery of possession of four villages. The suit was brought in the Court of the Judge of Small Causes at Allahabad exercising the powers of a Subordinate Judge. He gave the plaintiff a decree which has been reversed by the learned judges of the High Court, who dismissed the suit with costs.

(2.) THE facts of the case are few and simple and not now in dispute. The whole argument before this Board turned upon the meaning and effect of a judgment of the High Court in a previous litigation between Mahant Nepal Gir and Parshad Gir, the person whom the defendant Narbada Gir claims to represent.

(3.) THIS ikranama was duly registered on March 30, 1808. It recites that Bhola Gir before his death gave the following direction to his four chelas in the presence of respectable people: "After me you four persons should by common consent become proprietors of all the properties belonging to the gaddi of Baba Baghambari, and should maintain the property and management thereof as usual like myself." It then goes on to declare that, in compliance with that direction and in order to avoid future disputes and to keep up the name and prestige of the gaddi and properties, the four persons parties to the deed unanimously covenanted in the terms expressed in the following clauses. Clause 1 provided that Nepal Gir, having been appointed mahant, should be installed as gaddi-nashin. Clause 2, so far as material, was in the following words: Secondly, that as formerly the name of Baba Bhola Gir was entered in respect of the ilakas (villages) and the mahant's name was not entered, so the names of Bijai Gir and Parshad Gir be entered in respect of the ilakas, and they should be peshwakars (heads) and managers of the property (ilakas) and other affairs, and should maintain the management of receipts and disbursements in the same way as it had been before. But they, on account of their names being entered, or any other person for any reason neither have nor shall have any right whatever nor even the mahant himself shall have any power of partition or temporary or permanent transfer in respect of the whole or any part of the movable or immovable property, because all the properties belong to the gaddi of Baba Baghambari, and they are not meant for person or for any particular individual.