SHRI KESHEORAJ DEO SANSTHAN KARANJA Vs. BAPURAO DEOBA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This order will govern the disposal of all these petitions which raise a common question under the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands (Vidarbha Region and Kutch Area) Act, 1958, Act No. XCIX of 1958.

(2.) THE petitioner in all these cases is Shri Kesheoraj Deo Sansthan of Karanja. The Sansthan filed an application against several tenants in respect of lands held by them, before the Naib Tahsildar, Murtizapur, claiming possession of the lands under cultivation of the several tenants under Section 36(2), read with Rule 16, of the Bombay Tenancy Act of 1958 and the rules made thereunder applicable in this region. Prior to that the petitioner had issued a notice purporting to be a notice under Section 38 of the new Tenancy Act through their advocate to various tenants. One such notice is to be found at page 16 of the paper book in Special Civil Application No. 368 of 1962. The notice recites that the client on whose behalf the notice is given, is a private Sansthan and that one Kesheorao Amte was its Wahiwatdar. Then the notice proceeds to say that the Sansthan owns property described in the notice and that the Sansthan is entitled to determine the tenancy in respect of the land because the landlord bona fide requires the land for cultivating it personally. Then certain reasons are given as to why the landlord requires resumption of the land; the principal reason is that cultivation of the land is the main source of income of the Sansthan and its establishment and that the land which is yielding income by way of leasing is required to be brought under personal cultivation to increase the return from this property. Similar averments are made in the application filed by the petitioner in the several cases before the Naib Tahsildar. The Naib Tahsildar did not issue notice to any of the tenants. He passed a short order rejecting the petition with the following observation:.The landlord in this case, the deity, has applied for personal cultivation under Section 38 of the Bombay Act 99/58 through Manager. As per recent rulings of Bombay Revenue Tribunal, the deity cannot required (V.O. Sic.) land for personal cultivation, as the agent's requirements cannot be deemed deity's requirement and it cannot be said that the landlord bona fide required the land for personal cultivation vide Case No. Ten./1142 of 1955, dated 23 -8 -55 (S.V. Mathad v. V.K. Ajjappalawar). Hence the application is rejected.

(3.) THE matter was taken before the Revenue Tribunal and by an elaborate and well -considered order the Tribunal upheld the decisions of the two Courts below. In arriving at their conclusion the Tribunal referred to a statement in para. 3(1)(c) of the application filed before the Tahsildar in which the petitioner has alleged that the income by the cultivation of the land, of which the Sansthan is entitled to take possession, is the principal source for the establishment, upkeep and maintenance of the Sansthan and its wahiwatdar. The Tribunal observed: The words underlined by us in the above extract clearly support the argument of Shri Dharmadhikari. That being so, there is no valid basis for the argument advanced by Shri Wadodkar that in the instant case the lands are not required for the maintenance of the Wahiwatdar but for the maintenance of the deity alone. In this context a reference was also made to a decision of a Division Bench of this Court reported in Buvasaheb Tatyasaheb v. Yesu Krishna (1959) 62 Bom. L.R. 219 : [1960] N.L.J. 219. The Tribunal also referred to another decision of the Revenue Tribunal in Revision Application No. 267 of 1961, decided on January 16, 1962 (Raghunath v. Gopal), and found that the decisions of the two lower authorities were in conformity with that decision.