Resumption of land from ultivating tenant.

Anantanarayanan, J.-

These revision proceedings arose from petitions by a landlord claiming to resume cultivations of his holding to the permitted extent under section 4-A (2) of the Madras Cultivating Tenants’ Protection Act (Act XXV of 1955.) In both these proceedings the Revenue Divisional Officer, Dindigul, held that section 4-A (1) of the Act must be considered as qualified by section 4-A (3), , so that the tenant is entitled to be in possession of the land under the terms of section 4-A (3). The only ground canvassed in both the revision petitions was that this view was erroneous, and that section 4-A (2) conferred upon the landlord an absolute right to resume, not affected by section 4-A (3) , provided the other conditions of section 4-A were satisfied.

The matter came up before Kunhamed Kutti, J., and the learned Judge directed that the proceedings might be placed before My Lord the Chief Justice for being put before a Bench, in view of the apparent conflict in the decisions in Thayammal v. Karuppanna Thevar1and Rajammal v. Chinnakannu Ambalam2to which decisions, I shall presently make reference. It is thus that the matter now comes up before us.

As far as section 4-A (1) and section 4-A (3) are concerned, the apparent conflict between which is the content of the revision proceedings, I shall presently show that the consensus of view in this Court has been that there is no conflict, and that the sections are perfectly reconcilable with each other, the right granted under section 4-A(1) is subject to the overriding rights of a cultivating tenant under section 4-A (3) to continue in possession on payment of the contractual rent. It is noteworthy that in Thayammal v. Karuppanna Thevar1 , Kailasam, J., did not differ from the earlier view adopted by this Court on two relevant occasions, as far as this interpretation is concerned. On the contrary, he agreed with those views. But he expressed the view that section 4-A (4) , in his opinion, gave a separate right to a landlord to resume cultivation, to the extent permitted by that sub-section, which was not qualified by the provisions of section 4-A (3) of the Act. It is this matter which has now to be determined in the light of the authorities.

The apparent conflict between section 4-A (1) and section 4-A (3) came up for •decision before this Court in Rajammal v. Chinnakannu Ambalam2which is a judgment of My Lord the Chief Justice. This Court had then to deal with the interpretation of these sections, in the light of the argument advanced that a literal interpretation of section 4-A (3) of the Act giving the same neaning to the term “ cultivating tenant” as in sub- section (1) of the section might render nugatory the very provisions of the section and the right conferred on the landlord as well as machinery set up to enforce that right. Dealing with this aspect, this Court had occasion to point out that, on the basis of the principles of the interpretation of the statutes as enunciated in several authorities, it was permissible to depart from a literal adherence to the words of the enactment, where such adherence would result in absurdity, inconvenience or injustice. After an analysis of the provisions, in the light of those authorities, the conclusions were expressed in the following form:-

“If- section 4-A (3) is limited to those cultivating tenants who would be entitled to the benefits of the Fair Rent Act, there will be no conflict between section 4-A (1) and section 4-A (3) of the Act. On the other hand, there will be a happy correlation of the provisions with less injustice to the landlord and the greater opportunity to effectively carry out the intention of the Legislature, as expressed in section 4-A (1).”

If I may be permitted to convey the argument thus expressed by My Lord, the Chief Justice, in another form, the point here is that the Legislature was intending to mitigate, as far as the landlord was concerned, the rigours of the law which gave the cultivating te