ABDUL KADER ROWTHEN Vs. VELU NAYAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE appellant is a trader in timber. On the 14th January, 1937, he acquired a lease from the respondent of a small piece of land at Olavakode in the Palghat Municipality. His object in taking the lease was to store timber on the land. When he entered into occupation he erected three sheds. The landlord had the right to determine the tenancy on demand and required the tenant to vacate in the early part of 1940. As his demand for possession was not complied with he filed a suit for ejectment in the Court of the District Munsiff of Palghat. The appellant pleaded that he could not be evicted until the respondent had paid to him the value of the three sheds as they had been erected with the knowledge and consent of the respondent. This plea was rejected by the District Munsiff who granted a decree for ejectment without requiring the respondent to make any payment on account of the structures. The appellant appealed to the Subordinate Judge of South Malabar. In that Court the respondent based his claim for compensation on the provisions of the Malabar Compensation for Tenants Improvements Act, 1899. The Subordinate Judge held that the Act did not apply and dismissed the appeal. The appellant then appealed to this Court. In the first place the case came before Somayya, J., who called for a finding from the Subordinate Judge on the question whether the erection of the sheds constituted an improvement to the land. The Subordinate Judge reported that it did. Somayya, J., then directed that the case should be placed before a Bench for hearing as the extent of the application of the Malabar Compensation for Tenants Improvements Act was in dispute.

(2.) THE effect of the Act has been raised in several cases which have come before this Court and it is necessary for the purpose of deciding this appeal to examine them in detail. We propose to take them in the order of date but before doing so we must refer to the relevant sections of the Act.

(3.) THE first case in which the scope of the Act was discussed by this Court is Chathukutty v. : (1927)53MLJ224 . It was a second appeal which was heard by Jackson, J. There the plaintiff had let to the defendant a shop in a town in Malabar for five years, the tenant agreeing to remove a bakery oven erected by him therein when surrendering the shop at the end of the period. On the expiration of the tenancy the plaintiff sued to recover arrears of rent and possession of the property. The defendant pleaded that he was entitled under the Act to compensation for the oven before being ejected. The learned Judge held that it was entirely foreign to the intention of the enactment to hold that because a house or shop must necessarily stand upon land, therefore, whenever a house or a shop was leased the tenant was the lessee of land within the meaning of the statute. As far as his knowledge went it had invariably been held in Malabar that the Act applied to agricultural holdings and to what were known as kudiyiruppus or vacant sites available for buildings and did not apply to sites which were already mainly occupied by houses or shops. The opinion of Jackson, J., that the Act only applies to improvements effected in agricultural holdings and vacant sites built upon when let for that purpose has found favour in subsequent decisions of this Court.