The central legal point established in the judgment is that once land is proven to have been ryoti land, it cannot be treated as private land except in specific cases mentioned in the Madras Estates Land Act.

Sadasiva Aiyar, J.

1. The 1st defendant (appellant) is the Zemindar of Mirzapuram and the plaintiff (respondent) is the purchaser in the Court-auction sale of a certain cultivable land in the estate, the sale having been held in execution of a mortgage decree passed against one P. Venkayya who was the ryot tenant of the land till 1397 the mortgage suit having been brought against him in 1906 when he had ceased to be the tenant of the land. In 1897, the said P. Venkayya abandoned the land and the Zemindar took possession of it and yet as Venkayya was the original mortgagor (the mortgage deed being dated 1894) he was impleaded as the defendant in the mortgage suit of 1906 and the Zamindar who was in possession was not impleaded. The plaintiff as the Court auction-purchaser brought this suit in 1915 in ejectment of the 1st defendant the Zaraindar who is in possession of the land.

2. The Lower Appellate Court held ([) that as the land was admittedly ryoti land till 1897, it could never become converted into private land, because by the statute law land which is ascertained to have been at one time, however remote, ryoti land could never become converted into Kamatam land; (2) assuming even that ryoti land could be so converted by the Zamindar into Kamatam after relinquishment by the ryot, the mortgage created by the ryot before such relinquishment could not be affected in any way and the sale in execution of the decree obtained on the mortgage conferred on the purchaser at that sale the right to hold that land as ryoti land.

3. As regards the first point, it must be admitted that there is a strong body of judicial opinion in the decisions of this Court in support of the view that if a land is proved to have once been ryoti land, it could never be treated afterwards as having (by any dealings by the Zamindar or by the tenant or by both) been converted into Kamatam land except in the single case mentioned in the proviso to Section 185 of the Madras Estates Land Act, namely, except where the land-holder has by his own servants or by hired labour with his own or hired stock cultivated the land as private land for 12 years immediately before the commencement of the Act, In Zamindar of Chellapalli v. Soniaya (1914) I.L.R. 39 Mad. 341 that very learned Judge Seshagiri Aiyar, J. has given reasons in pages 349, 350 and 351, in support of the above view. This view of Seshagiri Aiyar, J. seems to have been accepted by Abdur Rahim, J. and Burn, J. in Sreemanta Raja Yartagadda Mallikarjuna Prasada Naidu Bahadur v. Subbayya (1920) 39 M.L.J. 277. The learned Chief Justice however in Zamindar of Chellapalli v. Soniaya 1 held the view that a ryoti land can be shown to have been converted into private land by evidence of other acts than the acts mentioned in the proviso to Section 185 but added that such evidence should be "very clear and satisfactory." The learned Chief Justice held further in that particular case that the calling of the lands as Kamatam and the letting of them out on terms negativing occupancy right with a view to prevent the, assertion of such right (even if such letting had gone on from 1875 till 1910) were insufficient to convert them into private lands if such conduct of the Zamindar could be held to have been merely colourable for the purpose of defeating the rights of the occupancy tenants. The inclination of my own view is to follow with respect the opinion of Seshagiri Aiyar, J. In the present case as the cultivation by hired servants of the Zamindar could not have begun prior to 12 years before July 1908 when the Madras Estates Land Act came into force (the abandonment having been only in 1897), the land must be deemed to have continued to be ryoti land.

4. On the other question whether there has been a valid relinquishment, valid at least to the extent that the tenant lost all interest in the land relinquished, I have nothing to add to what my learned brother has said in the judgment prepared by him in this case.

5.