The Secretary of State for India in Council vs Rao Bahadur Paul Appaswami (dead) and Others

Varadachariar, J.—These are second appeals by the Secretary of State for India against the decrees of the Courts below directing refund of

water cess levied on the plaintiff''s inam lands and restraining the defendant by injunction from levying water cess in future on those lands. All the

three cases have heen dealt with together in the Lower Appellate Court and may similarly be dealt with here.

Though no document of grant is available, and indeed none seems to have been produced even before the inam commission there can be very

little doubt that the inam grant was of the entire village and not of any portion thereof; reserving any other portion to the grantor. As pointed out by

the Lower Appellate Court, it is so stated in column 13 of the Inam Register and such other evidence as we have as to the user of the tank by the

inamdar in respect of fishery rights and so on and of repairs executed by him to the tank only goes to confirm the inference suggested by the entries

in the Inam Register that it must have been a grant of the whole of the village and not of a part of the village.

The Inam Register refers to the nature of the Original grant as one on Kattukuthagai. This is defined in Wilson''s Glossary as land ""held in farm

on a permanently fixed money rent"", but the account in Mr. Venkaswami Rao''s Manual of the Tanjore District is fuller. It is there pointed out that

the underlying idea was that the payment should be by way of a consolidated assessment on the entire village area, with full liberty to the grantee in

respect of the extent of land to be brought under the plough and the crops to be raised, without any enhancement of the demand. The Inam

Register also contains a note in this case that the village was originally granted on the Kattukuthagai system, ""in consequence of the ruined condition

of the tank at the time of the grant"". This circumstance, far from making it probable that the tank was reserved by the grantor certainly supports the

contrary inference that the grantee was expected to restore the tank and make it efficient as a source of irrigation. This again is in conformity with

the subsequent course of conduct, viz., that the inamdars have all along effected repairs to the tank, enjoyed the fishery lease thereof and otherwise

treated themselves as owners of the tank. It is thus clear that even the considerations mentioned in Ambalavana Pandara Sannadhy Vs. The

Secretary of State for India in Council, and Narayanaswamy Naidu v. Secretary of State for India (1912) 24 M.L.J. 36, in favour of an inference

of reservation of the source of irrigation to the grantor do not exist here. On the other hand, the case will be governed by the principle recognised

by Benson and Sundara Ayyar, JJ., in Secretary of State v. Kannepalli Venkataratnammah (1912) 23 M.L.J. 109.

The learned Government Pleader put forward an argument with reference to the extents entered under the various heads in the Inam Register,

that they do not comprise the bed of the tank as part of the Inamdar''s land. I do not agree that a correct reading of those entries supports that

argument. As usual the whole extent of the village is first stated, a certain portion is deducted as poramboke and the rest alone classified under the

three heads of wet, dry and garden, each head being sub-divided in turn under cultivated and poramboke. I presume that the tank bed and the bed

of the channel must be comprised in the first general deduction under the head of poramboke. The Inam Register itself refers to the fact that the

village is irrigated by water from this tank and that this tank receives its supply of water from the Chittar river through a feeder channel. It certainly

could not therefore have been lost sight of that the tank formed part of the Inam. I therefore see no reason to differ from the conclusion of the

Courts below that the tank which is wholly situated within the inam village and so much of the feeder channel as lies within the limits of the Inam

village form part of the Inamdar''s property.

It is true that the decision of the Privy Council in The Secretary of State for India v. Srinivasa Chariar (1920) 40 M.L.J. 262 : L.R. 48 IndAp 56

: ILR 44 Mad. 421 has put a restricted interpretation upon the nature of the Inamdar''s property in the land granted to him as inam, but no difficulty

arises in the present case on account of that theory because even in the view that the land was granted to him only for the purpose of cultivation, it

must reasonably follow that the tank also must have passed to him to the extent necessary to enable him to cultivate the lands thus granted. We are

not concerned in this case with any question of sub-soil rights.

Once it is held that the tank is the property of the Inamdar, at least in the sense above indicated, and it not being proved that the size of the

feeder channel or the tank has been enlarged by the Inamdar, I see no reason for not following the course of decisions in this Court which have

held that the Inamdar''s immunity from water cess is not restricted to the extent of mamool wet lands.

The Second Appeals fail and are dismissed. As regards costs the respondent in S.A. No. 1753 of 1931 will get the costs incurred in respect of

printing charges and vakalat. Counsel''s fee will be allowed in S.A. No. 659 of 1933-only one set-to be shared equally by respondents 1 and 2.

Time for payment three months.

Leave to appeal refused.