Payment should be denied for improvements effected in violation of an order of injunction, and disobedience of the injunction does not provide the basis for a claim.

1. The plaintiff in O.S. No. 316 of 1121 of the Court of the Principal District Munsiff of Neyyattinkara, a suit for redemption, is the appellant in this Second Appeal. He was the respondent in A.S. No. 719 of 1956 of the Court of the Principal Subordinate Judge of Trivandrum, the appeal from which this Second Appeal arises.

2. During the pendency of the suit an injunction was issued by the trial court prohibiting the respondents from making improvements on the property. In spite of the order and in deliberate violation thereof they constructed a building on the property. The question for determination is whether the learned Subordinate Judge was right when he directed that the appellant should pay its value as part of the price of redemption.

3. The District Munsiff held that the respondents were not entitled to the value of the building as it was erected in contravention of the order of injunction, and that they should remove it. The Subordinate Judge

came to an opposite conclusion on the basis of 1957 KLT.1274.

4. In 1957 KLT.1274 this Court followed 15 Cochin Law Reports 167 and said:

"Under the law as enacted in the Travancore-Cochin Compensation for Tenants Improvements Act, 1956 a tenant is entitled to make legitimate improvements up to the date of actual eviction and if he was restrained by an order of the court from making improvements, he is all the same entitled to the value of improvements effected in contravention thereof, even though be may be liable to the penalties for disobedience of the order of injunction."

The statement in 15 Cochin Law Reports 167 is:

"The next ground urged is that a portion of the building was constructed after the service of injunction in this case and that at any rate, no compensation should be paid for that portion. Now, as has been found already, it was a legitimate improvement by the 2nd defendant that was being effected when, by reason of the plaintiffs' misrepresentation, the court was led to issue the injunction in question. The prohibition to making such improvements was therefore improper. Even in spite of its impropriety, the violation of the order of injunction may lead to appropriate penal consequences. But the declaration of the work to be not an improvement, in spite of its character to the contrary, or the deprivation of the tenant of the legitimate compensation therefor, cannot be regarded as falling among such consequences. A tenant has the right to make legitimate improvement up to the date of the actual eviction from the property. That being so, to issue an injunction of the present nature to the effect contended for by the appellants would be an arbitrary and oppressive form of unjustly restricting the rights of the tenant. We do not therefore find any good ground for holding that any portion of the building in question is not an improvement, and for which therefore compensation need not be paid. The lower court's decision is therefore right.

5. Our attention was also invited to AIR. 1944 Madras 262. In that case the Court said:

"The other contention put forward in this Second Appeal is that despite the fact that the appellant disobeyed the injunction of the Court, she is nevertheless entitled to improvements up to the date of ejectment. The wording of S.5, 6, and 7, Malabar Compensation for Tenants Improvements Act, has been cited; and it appears that the tenant is entitled to compensation for all improvements made up to the date of dispossession, even though some of the improvements may have been made after the suit for ejectment had been filed and even after a decree had been passed. It appears from a reading of these sections that the Court has no discretion in the matter. It must order compensation for improvements made up to the date of dispossession to be paid to the tenant; and it cannot refuse to order compensation to be paid because of some disobedience of an order of the Court".

6. We take the view that the proper approach to the problem is not what is i