Balakrishna Ayyar, J.-On 24th March, 1950, Komaravelu Pillai, the permanent hereditary karnam of the village of Thadikombu in Dindigul taluk died leaving him surviving a widow by name Nagarathnammal and a minor son, Vellaswami aged about 12 years. By an order made on 4th September, 1950, the Sub-Collector Dindigul, registered Vellaswami as the permanent karnam and appointed one Ibrahim Saheb to be his deputy during the period of his minority. Against this order appointing Ibrahim Saheb as deputy, Nagarathnammal, preferred an appeal to the District Collector, Mathurai. Her prayer to the Sub-Collector appears to have been that one Nagaratnam, a relation of hers, should be appointed deputy By an order, dated 28th October, 1950, the District Collector set aside the appointment of Ibrahim Saheb on the ground that it was undesirable to appoint a Muslim as deputy of a Hindu minor. As Nagarathnammal had intimated that she was willing to nominate Nagaratnam, the District Collector directed the Sub-Collector to examine the qualifications of the nominee and to appoint him if he was found suitable. Ibrahim Saheb thereupon filed a revision petition to the Board of Revenue. Nagarathnammal appeared by counsel before the Board and raised the objection that it had no jurisdiction to interfere with the order of the Collector. But by its order, dated 25th April, 1951, the Board overruled the objection of Nagarathnammal to its jurisdiction and set aside the order of the Collector and confirmed the appointment of Ibrahim Saheb as deputy. Nagarathnammal then preferred a revision petition to the Government, and the Government allowed the petition without notice to Ibrahim Saheb who thereupon came to this Court by a Writ Petition No 173 of 1952 calling in question the order of the Government on the ground that it was passed without notice to him and therefore in contravention of the principles of natural justice. The writ petition was allowed on that ground and the matter remitted to Government for fresh disposal in accordance with law. When the matter thus went back to the Government, they took the view that they had no revisional powers and declined to interfere. The result was that the order of the Board appointing Ibrahim Saheb as deputy stood. Nagarathnammal has therefore come to this Court with this petition to quash the order of the Board on the ground, that it had no jurisdiction to interfere with the order of the District Collector. That petition came on in the first instance before one of us, namely Rajagopala Ayyangar, J. He observed:

“The question, therefore, is whether the Board of Revenue have or have not the power of revision which they have purported to exercise in their order now impugned, dated 25th April, 1951. There are two decisions of this Court both of them of Benches which have a bearing upon this question, the first one being Seshagiri Sarma v. State of Madras1, and the other which is still unreported being one rendered in L.P.A.No.225 of 1952 . In the earlier decision the learned Chief Justice and Venkatarama Aiyar, J., have taken the view that the Board of Revenue have no revisional powers over Collectors in respect of their judicial or quasi-judicial functions. In the latter case, a directly opposite conclusion was reached by Govinda Menon and Basheer Ahmed Sayeed, JJ. It is possible that there might be some small points of difference or distinction between the present case and those dealt with by the two judgments but I do not think that without preferring the one decision to the other the present writ can be disposed of. The proper course, it appears to me to follow, is to place the papers before my Lord the Chief Justice for directions either to refer the case to a Bench or to a Full Bench for resolving the conflict between these two Bench decisions and there will be a direction accordingly.”

That is how. the matter now comes before us. The question we have to decide is whether the Board of Revenue has power to interfere

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