The jurisdiction of the Civil Courts is not excluded as the present claim does not fall under the exceptions provided in Section 21 and does not come under the proviso to Sub-section (1) of Section 13.

Subrahmania Aiyar, J.

1. The plaintiff here sues to recover possession of the land in dispute alleging that he is the holder of the office of karnam in the proprietary village of Lukulam and that the land in dispute itself is the emolument of the office.

2. The defendant does not set up any right to the. office or its emoluments and his denial of the plaintiffs claim is solely on the ground that the land in dispute is not attached to the said office but was the private property of the plaintiff which passed to the defendant under a Court sale in execution of a decree against the plaintiff. The point for determination is whether. Civil Courts have any jurisdiction or not to entertain such a suit. As Mr. Krishnaswami Aiyar on behalf of the plaintiff pointed out, unless the jurisdiction of the Civil Court has been taken away, that jurisdiction must be taken to exist, and the question is whether Section 21 of the Madras Hereditary Village Offices Act (Madras Act III of 1895) read with the proviso to the first clause of Section 13 takes it away as contended on behalf of the defendant. The bar to the jurisdiction of the Courts created by Section 21 is not absolute but is limited. The matters excepted from the cognizance of the Civil Courts ere:

i. claims to succeed to the offices specified in Section 3;

ii. claims to recover the emoluments of the offices save the emoluments referred to in Section 13 Sub-section 2, i.e., which consist of lands themselves; and

iii. questions as to the rate of amount of the emoluments.

3. As the present is a claim not falling under any of these three classes, it would follow that the jurisdiction of the Civil Courts is not excluded.

4. Against this view it was urged that under the provisions of Section 13 the present claim was cognizable by the Revenue Courts, that the proviso to Section 21 deals with the only case in which resort to a Civil Court is allowed where the matter is cognizable by the Revenue Courts, and that the present claim not being within the proviso cannot be made the subject of litigation in Civil Courts. But the first step in this argument is not warranted by anything in Section 13 which enumerates the different descriptions of suits within the cognizance of the Revenue Courts and is exhaustive of the matter. They are:

i. Suits for village offices specified in Section 3;

ii. Suits for the emoluments of such an office on the ground that the plaintiff is entitled under Sub-section 2 or 3 of Section 10 of the Madras Proprietary Estates Village Service Act, 1894, or under Sub-sections 2 and 3 of Section 10 or Sub-section 2 or 3 of Section 11, or Section 12 of the Hereditary Village Offices Act itself, as the case may be, to hold such office and enjoy such emoluments; and,

iii. Suits by a minor to be registered as heir of the last holder.

5. The present is obviously not of the 1st or of the 3rd class. Nor does it come under the 2nd, class for though it is a suit for the recovery of the emoluments attached to the plaintiffs office still as such emolument is land the suit is outside the purview of the portion of the section relating to this 2nd class under which the only questions could be as to the title of the office itself or to the fact of the existence of an emolument attached thereto, or to other matter connected therewith, provided the emolument is not land in the special sense in which the term is used in the section as appears from the second proviso to the first Clause thereof, i.e., the kudivaram right included.

6. It was next urged that the language of the said proviso is consistent with the view that the present suit is cognizable by a Civil Court. In my judgment the language conveys precisely the contrary meaning, and as I read it, whenever one party asserts that the emolument of the office is land and this is denied by the other party such question is to be adjudicated not by the Revenue but by the Civil Courts alone; and this undoubtedly is the character of the present suit. I a