Judgement

Consolidated Appeal (No. 47 of 1925) from orders of the High Court (April 5, 1922) in an appeal under the letters patent, reversing orders of a Division Bench which had affirmed orders of the Principal District Munsif of Tenali.

The respondents brought suits in the Munsifs Court to eject the appellants, who were ryots, from lands in the agraharam village of Arepalli. The question in the litigation was whether the village constituted an estate within the Madras Estates Land Act, 1908, in which case the Revenue Courts had exclusive jurisdiction in the suits by s. 189 of the Act. It was contended by the defendants that the village was an " estate " within s. 3, sub-s. 2 (d), which is set out in the present judgment, and the substantial question arising was whether the inam grant to the plaintiffs predecessors included, as they contended, the kudivaram, or was, as the defendants contended, merely of the melvaram, or land-revenue.

The original grant was lost, but there was produced from the custody of certain of the plaintiffs a document (exhibit 1) which was more than thirty years old, and purported to contain a copy of the grant of 1689. This document appears in the judgment