The amended section did not affect cases where a raiyat held a homestead under the old section and acquired rights as a raiyat in respect of the homestead tenancy.

JUDGMENT

Chakravartti, J. - These six appeals arise out of as many suits for ejectment brought by the same plaintiff against different defendants. They involve a common question of law and were heard together. On the facts, the suits fall into two groups, one composed of Suits Nos. 96, 97, 100 and 101 out of which arise second Appeals numbered 836, 837, 838 and 839 respectively and the other composed of Suits Nos. 93 and 99 out of which arise respectively Appeals numbered 834 and 835.

2. The plaintiff is a joint stock company which in the years 1919 and 1920 obtained permanent leases of certain areas of land for the expansion of its mills. In two of the three documents, there is a casual reference to settlement of tenants as one of the acts to be within the rights of the lessee, but it is perfectly clear that the immediate and governing purpose was a manufacturing one and this character of the plaintiff's leases was not questioned either in the Courts below or before me. On portions of the land so settled with the company, the defendants, who had been inducted by the company's lessors, had already their homesteads but the leases stated that they were liable to eviction and might be evicted. The lessors of the company appear in each case to have been zamindars. The tenancies of the defendants in suits Nos. 98 and 99 have been found by the Courts below to have been created 25 or 30 years ago. In the remaining four cases, the tenancies have branched out of an original settlement with a single tenant which, according to the version of the defendants apparently accepted by the Courts below, was made about 20 years ago. The defendant in Suits Nos. 96 and 97 who is the same person is an heir of the original tenant and the defendant in suits Nos. 100 and 101, who again, is the same person, is a purchaser from an heir. When his purchase or purchases were made does not appear from the record.

3. The Record of Rights was published in the year 1933 and there with respect to these tenancies, all the defendants have been recorded as dakhalkar basat tenants. But they are otherwise settled raiyats, the defendants in the first group of suits, of the same village and the contiguous village of Balibhara and those in the other group, of the contiguous village of Garifa. The lower appellate Court has stated that the defendants are occupancy raiyats of the villages above mentioned but that, it appears, is an under-statement, as a reference to the Record of Rights would show. There is a further statement in the judgments under appeal that the tenancies of both the plaintiff and the defendants have been expressly recorded as governed by the Transfer of Property Act, but for that statement there is no foundation except that both have been described as dakhalkars. The company alleged in the plaints that the defendants were tenants-at-will and although their tenancies had been terminated by notices to quit, they had not quitted the lands. Accordingly the company prayed for ejectment of the defendants, mesne profits and injunctions restraining them from erecting further structures.

4. The special defence of the defendants in the first group of suits was that their tenancies were agricultural in character and could not be terminated by notices to quit under the Transfer of Property Act. The defendants in the other group of suits pleaded permanent tenancies. All the defendants, however, set up two common defences which were that no notices to quit had in fact been served, at least no valid notices, and that in any event they were protected from eviction by S. 182, Ben. Ten. Act. None of the defences other than the one taken under S. 182, Ben. Ten. Act, need be considered in these appeals. They were repelled by the Courts below and no attempt was made before me to pursue them further. The sole question, therefore, is whether the defendants are entitled to the benefit of S. 182, Ben. Ten. Act.

5. As regards whether the last question arises in all the appeals in t