Scope of separate registry under 1876 Act.

This is an application on behalf of the Kalahastheeswaraswami Devasthanam for the issue of a writ of mandamus prohibiting the State of Madras from taking possession of the village of Kalahasti. This village formed part of the ancient zamindari of Kalahasti which is one of the impartible estates included in the Madras Impartible Estate Act II of 1904. In the year Virodhikrit (1791-92) the Rajah of Kalahasti granted the village in inam to the temple. On 16th September, 1896 the then Zamindar of Kalahasti executed a mortgage over this and other villages. There was a suit to enforce this mortgage, O.S. No. 14 of 1909 on the file of the Subordinate Judge’s Court, North Arcot, and a decree was passed therein for the sale of the hypotheca. A new zamindar having succeeded to the estate, he filed O.S. No. 8 of 1911 in the Court of the Subordinate Judge, North Arcot, as hereditary trsutee of the Kalahastheeswaraswami Devasthanam, for a declaration that the mortgage, dated 16th September, 1896 in so far as it related to the village of Kalahasti was not binding on the temple, as the same was executed for the personal debts of the zamindar. That suit was decreed, the Court holding that the grant of the inam was true and that the mortgage was not binding on the temple. This decision was affirmed on appeal to this Court in A.S. N0.283 of 1911. The zamindari of Kalahasti is one of the estates abolished by Madras Act XXVI of 1948. On 12th December, 1950 the State of Madras notified the village of Kalahasti as a zamindari estate and it is the validity of this notification that is in question in this petition. The contention of the petitioner is that it should be notified as an undertenure and not as a zamin estate.

For a proper appreciation of the contentions involved in this petition, it is necessary to be amine the scheme of the Act as regards notification of estates. Section 3(b) provides that on notification an estate shall in its entirety stand transferred to the Gavernment and vest in them. The estates to which the Act applies are classed under section 2(3), into three categories, zamindari, undertenure or inam estate. Under section 2(7) an inam estate is defined as meaning all inam villages which fall within section 3(2)(d) of the Estates Land Act excluding those which became estates under the 1936 amendment. Under section 2(15) an undertenure estate means all estates which fall within the definition of estates under section 3 (2)(e) of the Estates Land Act. The definition of a zamindari estate under section 3(16) includes estates falling within section 3(2)(a), (b) and (c) exclusing estates which fall under section 3(2)(e). This three-fold classification of estates has a material bearing on three matters-the amount of compensation which the proprietor is entitled to get under the Act; the right to get the ryotwari patta for lands situated within the estate; and the procedure to be adopted for determining certain rights of holders of inam estates and undertenures. Under section 37 the compensation payable is calculated with reference to a scale of “basic annual sum”. The principles on which that sum is determined vary with the three classes of estates. Section 27 lays down the principles on which the basic annual sum should be calculated for zamindari estates, section 31 for inam estates and section 36 for undertenure estates. It may in general be stated that the compensation payable will be higher in the case of inam estates and undertenure estates created before 13th July, 1802 than in the case of zamindari estates or undertenure created after that date! With reference to the right to get ryotwari pattas, a similar difference is observable with reference to inam estates and undertenure created prior to 13th July, 1802 on the one hand and zamindaris and undertenures created after that date, on the other. Then again while the ascertainment of what are zamindari estates presents no problems, the question whether an estate is an inam