The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation and application of Article 3 of Schedule 3 to the Bengal Tenancy Act in determining the limitation period for suits related to recovery of possession of land by a raiyat or an under-raiyat.

JUDGMENT

Rankin, C.J. - This is a Letters Patent appeal from a difference of opinion arising at the hearing of a Second Appeal before my learned brothers Mr. Justice Cuming and Mr. Justice Page.

2. I agree with the view of Mr. Justice Page that the plaintiffs' suit must be dismissed on the ground that it is out of time by reason of Article 3 of Schedule 3 to the Bengal Tenancy Act; and in this view the other considerations which might have arisen for our attention do not require to be argued at the bar.

3. The facts of the case are not in dispute between the trial Court and the District Court. The position shortly is that there was a rent suit against the plaintiffs and also Defendants Nos. 3 and 4 brought by Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 on the 30th of May 1914. Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 were landlords of a holding of which the plaintiffs were co-sharer tenants. The rent suit was brought and was decreed on the 10th of November 1914 ex-parte. In that rent suit it appears that the Court without obtaining consent of the plaintiffs' mother appointed her as guardian to the plaintiffs and it is to my mind clear that in the three Courts before which this case has come the fact that the mother did not consent to that appointment was treated as plain. I consider that it sufficiently appears from the judgment of the trial Court. In these circumstances the decree having been passed on the 10th of November 1914, on the 15th of December 1915 the plaintiffs in that suit - Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 in the present suit - obtained symbolical possession of the land in question.

4. At sometime which is plainly before the 2nd of November 1916 there was an actual ouster of the plaintiffs from their land. This suit has been brought on the 25th of July 1919 - more than two year after that ouster, and it is argued before us on behalf of the landlords - Defendants Nos. 1 and 2 - and the new tenants whom they have put upon the land - Defendants Nos. 5 to 7 - that the suit is within Article 3 of Schedule 3 to the Bengal Tenancy Act.

5. On these simple facts it might be supposed that the question of the applicability of Article 3 was fairly free from difficulty. As a matter of fact, the decisions of this Court make the question a little complicated and the present case requires us to consider carefully the scope and meaning of the article, as to which there 13 much contradiction in the decisions.

6. Article 3 of Schedule Ill is clearly modelled upon Article 142 of the Indian Limitation Act. The description of suit is expressed thus - "To recover possession of land claimed by the plaintiff as a raiyat or an under-raiyat;" and there is little difficulty in seeing from that description that the article applies only where the plaintiff is asserting a subsisting tenancy right as against the person under whom he claims to hold. As applicable to such a person and such a person only, would one expect to find in this Act the not very precise language which one finds in column of that Schedule. On that question this Court, so far as I know, has not entertained any doubt. Starting, therefore, from the fact that the class of case we are considering is a suit brought by a person claiming a subsisting tenancy right under the defendant we come to consider the third column of the schedule. There the language is "the date of dispossession." In the corresponding column in Article 142 there is a reference to "discontinuance of possession"; and I put aside any question which may arise out of that slight change. It is clear, therefore, that the article contemplates a suit of the character I have already described based upon dispossession as part of the cause of action.

7. The next question which arises is this. Is it necessary and safe and right to add to the third column the words "dispossession by the defendant"? The defendant in such a case must be the alleged landlord. Is it to be taken as plain that the third column means that the defendant and no other person must have dispossessed th