JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J.:—This appeal, by special leave, from the judgment of a Single Judge of the Calcutta High Court raises a single legal issue with human overtones. The State of West Bengal is the appellant at this the forth and final deck of the judicial pyramid; having won the case as the 5th defendant at the earlier stages of the litigation but lost in the High Court. The question, shortly put, is whether the vesting of estates in the State under Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act, 1953 (West Bengal Act 1 of 1954) (abbreviated for reference hereinafter as the Act) extinguishes the right of cattle grazing enjoyed by villagers in the grasslands of such estates on the ground that such right amounts to incimbrance within Section 2 (h) of the Act.

The facts:

2. An estate in villagers Vadurepati Madhabpur in the district of Hooghly was among those vested in the State on a notification under Section 4 of the Act, free from all encumbrances as provided in Sections 4 and 5. The plaintiffs - respondents are some of the denizens of the said village and, in this representative action, claim that the agrarian community there have always enjoyed the right of pa