The surrender of an undefined share is not valid under Section 89 of the Central Provinces Tenancy Act, 1920, and a document purporting to be a surrender must be validly registered to be relied upon as a deed of sale.

Pollock, A J C—The two defendants along with Mahadeo were the co-tenants of an occupancy field. On 15th April 1926 Mahadeo executed a registered deed in favour of the plaintiff, the landlord of the village, purporting to surrender his one-third share in the holding. It has been held that Mahadeo had an undefined share in the holding. The plaintiff, alleging that he had been obstructed by the other co-tenants in his attempt to take possession, sued for joint possession of this one-third share. The defendants contended that there could be no surrender of an undefined and undemarcated share of a holding. Both the lower Courts have held that the surrender of an undefined share is valid and have decreed the plaintiff's claim for joint possession. Under Section 89, Central Provinces Tenancy Act, 1920, an occupancy tenant may surrender his holding to the landlord, but I doubt if this entitles him to surrender an undefined share in that holding. In Sarjuprasad v. Muratlal,1901 CPLR 33, where,an occupancy tenant purported to transfer a 3/4ths share of his holding to a malguzar who had a 3/4th share in the village and this malguzar sued for possession of 3/4ths of the holding, Ismay, J.C., held that the surrender in favour of one landlord was undoubtedly bad in law and was not binding on a joint landlord who was no party to the surrender and went on to remark:

It. is perfectly clear that the surrender of a portion of the holding which was not and could not be defined was altogether unmeaning and that a suit based on such a surrender is ill-founded.

2. In Ganpat v. Trimbak,1913 9 NLR 54 Drake-Brockman, J.C., without deciding whether a defined or undefined share in the occupancy holding had been surrendered, remarked:

Whether the plaintiff's guardians surrendered an undivided half share or a half divided by metes and bounds and whether there was or was not a cosharer in the tenant-right there seems to be no reason in equity or good conscience why the landlord should be deprived of what that surrender gave him.

3. In Nilkanth v. Bhagwant , where one co-tenant sold his half share in his ordinary holding to the other co-tenant for Rs. 450 without executing a registered sale-deed and the landlord sued for partition and separate possession of the undivided half share on the plea that it had been abandoned, Mittra, A.J.C. held that a tenant could not be deemed to have surrendered the holding, i. e. be deemed to have placed the landlord in possession of the holding and no possession could be given of an undefined share. In Sumera v. Pemchand, where the landlord had leased out an undefined area of his khudkasht land to the plaintiff who claimed to have become an ordinary tenant of it, Batten, J.C., held that he was not a tenant because the land of which he claimed to be a tenant was not a holding. He remarked:

A 'holding' means a parcel of land held by a tenant from a landlord under a lease. I do not see how a share, not defned by metes and bounds, can be described as a 'parcel' of land, A 'parcel' of land must be a dfinite piece ot land. To parcel means to divide into portions and what is not divided off cannot be a parcel.

4. In Shersingh v. Kalusingh,where one of two or more cotenants surrendered his rights to the landlord and his heirs were accepted as tenants by the landlord, Baker, J.C,. remarked:

I am not aware of anything in the Tenancy Act which can prohibit such an arrangement between the tenant, his heirs and the landlord.

5. Finally in Rindu vT Vithoba, where-some co-tenants surrendered their two-thirds share of a holding, Macnair, J.C., held that

the transaction was not a surrender of a holding but it was a transaction binding on the-parties.

6. If, as these decisions suggest, Section 89 does not permit of the surrender of an undefined share of a holding, it would appear that such a surrender is a transfer in contravention of Section 12, but the other co-tenants would have no right to-have it set aside Under Section 13 unless they were