JUDGMENT

HANSARIA, J. :—The respondent-plaintiff has placed himself within two horns of a bull and it is not possible for him to avoid strike by one or the other. And the bull is no ordinary one, as it has the backing and the blessings of no less powerful a body that Privy Council of Jamkhandi State, within whose territorial jurisdiction the suit property was situate, for the recovery of which the respondent made his claim by filing the present suit on 4-2-1954. It is a pity that despite the case of the appellant-defendant having received support from the Privy Council, he came to lose on the same point, to start with, at the hand of Civil Judge. The High Court, which ultimately upheld the view of the Civil Judge, should not have allowed this piquant situation to prevail.

2. The broad facts of the case at hand consist in filing of the present suit by respondent No. 1 in 1954, seeking possession of the suit property, as validly appointed Padadayya (Mathadhipati) of the math at Jamkhandi. The plaintiff claimed this property on the assertion that he had been duly installed as Padadayya on 30-1-1944, as a successor to Virupakshayya I, who had died as early as 1903. According to him, def