Claim by owner of site held tenable.

V. RAMASWAMI J.:- The land in R.C. No. 209/1 in Tiruppur village, Palladam taluk, Coimbatore District comprised in T.D. No. 174 was a Devadayam minor inam land and it was granted to one Mavalinga Naicker, for performing 'ugranam service' in the temple of Sri. Visweswaraswami and Veeraraghava Perumal at Tirupur. On a reading of the provisions of the Inam Fair Register extract relating to this minor inam, the settlement Tahsildar came to the conclusion that it is personal inam burdened with service of the categories specified in Section 8 (5) of the Tamil Nadu Minor Inam (Abolition and conversion into Ryotwari) Act (Act XXX of 1963), (hereinafter called the Act). This finding that it is a personal inam burdened with service is not in dispute in this case. The grantee alienated the property by way of permanent lease sometime in 1864. Subsequently the grantee sold and released the right of revision thus making the lessee an alienee of the grant itself. Though there was an attempt by the Government to resume the land on the ground of non-performance of service, that ultimately ended in a settlement accepting the alienation as valid. This minor inam was notified under the Act and taken over and the vesting date is 15-2-1965. It appears that almost the entire area became house sites and on the date when the minor inam was notified and taken over, there were buildings on the sites. These properties were divided into two schedules in the order of the settlement Tahsildar. Schedule-A related to cases where the buildings and sites were owned by a single individual. Schedule B related to cases where the superstructures were owned by different persons, but the sites were owned by the alienees from the grantee who will hereinafter be referred to as the 'land owners'. The Settlement Tahsildar following a decision of this court reported in Silambani Sri Chidambara Vinayagar Swami Devastanam v. Duraisami Nadar, 1971-2 Mad LJ 278: (AIR 1971 Mad 474) held that the persons who owned the buildings and the sites would be entitled for a patta under Section 13 of the Act. In respect of these cases where the superstructures are owned by different persons and not by the owners of the sites, a joint patta was directed to be issued in favour of the persons owning the superstructure and the land owner. Both the land owners and the owners of the buildings preferred appeals in respect of cases where them wine directions for issue of joint pattas claimed that each was entitled to separate pattas under Section 13. The Tribunal held that unless a person owns both the buildings and the site, patta cannot be granted to the owner of the building alone and rejected the claim by the owner of superstructures. But the Tribunal directed the issue of patta to the land owners on the ground that they are the owners of the sites and that therefore they must be deemed to be the owners of the buildings and accordingly patta has to be issued to them under Section 13. It is as against this judgment, these batches of cases are filed.

2. The finding that the appellants in all these cases are the owners of the superstructures concerned in these cases is a concurrent finding and there are no grounds also to interfere with the same. The finding of the Tribunal that the land owner owned the site is a legal inference made by the Tribunal and that is disputed in these cases. According to the learned counsel for the appellants in view of the decisions of this court, the land owner cannot claim a ryotwari patta under Section 8 (1) in respect of the site alone, nor can he claim a patta under Section 13 in respect of the building and the site as he did not own the superstructure on the site. On the other hand, relying on the decision in Sri Kumara Kattalai Subramaniaswami Devastanam at Mayuram v. Sundaram Chettiar ILR (1975) 1 Mad 501, and an unreported judgment in Ramachandra Pillai v. Shanmugha Pillai, (S.A. 1139 of 1969 by Ramanujam J.) the learned counsel for the respondent (