Customary rights must be ancient, certain, reasonable, and continuous. Government instructions for granting land to political sufferers do not confer rights enforceable in a court of law.

( 1 ) THE judgment of the Court was delivered by the Hon ble Mr. Justice viswanatha Sastry. These two Letters Patent Appeals have been preferred against the judgment of Umamaheswaram J. , in two second appeals S. A. No. 2517 of 1952 and S. A. No. 804 of 1953, affirming the decision of the Courts below decreeing the suit. The first defendant is the appellant in one of the appeals and the second defendant, the State of Andhra, represented by the Collector of Guntur, is the appellant in the other, though the contentions of the parties in both the appeals are the same. The plaintiffs sued as representing the inhabitants of Erikalapudi, a hamlet of Gudivada village, for a declaration that an assignment of 3 acres 60 cents of poramboke land in D. No. 493 by the second defendant (now the State of Andhra) in favour of the first defendant, a " political sufferer ", does not affect the rights of the plaintiffs to use the land as a Mandabayalu for their cattle, for threshing corn, boiling and drying turmeric and as a play ground for school boys and for an injunction restraining the defendants from interfering with the exercise of these rights. In the plaint the rights claimed by the plaintiffs were ascribed to a lost grant, prescription or custom. Their case was that d. No. 493 originally formed part of the Gramakantam of the hamlet of pasupuletivaripalem, that owing to a cyclone that occurred about 85 years ago the villagers left the hamlet and settled in the adjoining hamlet of erikalapudi, that after their migration the land comprised in D. No. 493 was used by the villagers as Mandabayalu and for other communal purposes, that the Government had recognised such user by recording the land as mandabayalu or cattle stand poramboke in the revenue register in 1914 and that it was not now open to the Government to assign the land to the first defendant in derogation of the rights over the land acquired by the villagers of Erikalapudi. The defendants pleaded that the land was Goverenment poramboke, that the plaintiffs had not acquired any rights in or over the land by grant, prescription or custom and that the assignment in favour of the 1st defendant was made by the Government in the exercise of its discretion and in accordance with the rules framed by the State Government. The learned Judge upheld the claim of the plaintiffs. The only two questions that were argued and that fell to be determined in the Second Appeals were thus formulated by the learned Judge :" (i) Whether the villagers of Erikalapudi have made out the customary right and easement pleaded in paragraphs 5 and 6 of their plaint; and (a) Whether the grant in favour of the 1st defendant is in accordance with g. O. No. 1523 (Revenue) dated 11-6-1949 and valid. "these points will be dealt with in the same order. In Ex. A-3, the Survey and Settlement Register of 1873 for Gudivada village, the land now in question was shown as S. No. 493, measuring 4 acres and classified as Government poramboke in Column 4. In the remarks column (No. 12) the entry was: "village site of Pasupuletivaripalem. " the land ceased to be used as a village site or required for that purpose at some period subsequent to 1873 though the exact date is not known. It appears that in 1914 the land was entered as mandabayulu or cattle stand poramboke in the revenue registers as ordered by the Special deputy Collector in his proceedings dated 9-7-1914. This order is not produced but it is admitted by the defendants that there was a change in the appellation of the poramboke in 1914. This circumstance supports the case of the plaintiffs to this extent that in 1914 and possibly for some years prior thereto, the land should have been used by the villagers as mandabayulu and therefore it was so described in 1914 in the revenue register. There was a recent attempt by one of the villagers to get an assignment of the land from the Government but the attempt failed owing to the refusal of the District collector to sanction
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