DEOKI NANDAN,J. - (1.) THIS is a defendants second appeal in a suit for demolition of certain constructions and possession over the land shown by letters A BCD, CD E F, H D F G shaded red in the Amin's map which is paper No. 291 Ga. The trial court decreed the suit. Whereupon the defen­dants appealed to the District Court. The appeal was heard by the Court of the Civil Judge, Gorakhpur and six points were raised by the appellants before it for determination. On the first point the lower appellate court found that the decree granted by the trial court was not bad on account of the fact that the plaintiffs did not get the plaint amended for incorporating the changes brought about by the constructions made during the pendency of the suit. On point no. 2 the lower appellate court held that the suit was maintainable. On point no. 3 the Court held that the Civil Court had jurisdiction to try the suit. On point no. 4 it was held that it was not open to the defendants to raise the plea that the oral evidence recorded before the Revenue Court could not be looked into for having been recorded by a court having no jurisdiction. On point no. 5 the lower appellate court held that the plaintiffs were the hereditary tenants of the land in suit. Point no. 6 was decided by saying that there was no substance in the defendants' objection to the correct­ness of the Amin's map.
(2.) THE learned counsel for the appellants urged before me that the finding that the plaintiff-respondents were hereditary tenants of the land in suit is erroneous in law inasmuch as it was arrived at by not only taking into consi­deration, but by treating as conclusive and binding, the decree of the Revenue Court in a suit under section 59/61 of the U. P. Tenancy Act, 1939 declaring the plaintiff-respondents to be the hereditary tenants of the land in suit. He urged that under section 55 of the U. P. Tenancy Act, 1939 a tenant is entitled to receive a written lease specifying certain essential particulars and under section 56 of that Act a lease for a period exceeding one year or from year to year can be made only by a registered instrument. According to the learned counsel the decree of the Revenue Court is not binding on the defendant-appellants who were not parties to the suit under section 59, and that being the position it was incumbent on the plaintiff-respondents to prove their title as against the defendant-appellants by cogent and reliable evidence in the suit giving rise to the present appeal, and no lease deed having been filed, it must be held that no tenancy rights could have existed in their favour in the face of the provisions of sections 55 and 56 of the U. P. Tenancy Act. I am unable to agree. A suit under section 59/60 of the U. P. Tenancy Act is a suit between a person claiming to be the tenant and the landlord. Learned counsel frankly conceded before me that the defendant-appellants did not question the fact that the other party to the suit under section 59/61 of the said Act was the landlord of the land in suit. Apart from the person claim­ing to be the tenant of the land, the person against whom the suit for declara­tion of tenancy rights is filed is the landlord who owns the land. The decree of the Revenue Court in a suit under section 59/61 of the U. P. Tenancy Act is a valuable piece of evidence that the tenancy rights of the plaintiff respon­dents had been upheld in the recent past by a court of competent jurisdiction. In my view, unless the defendant-respondents could successfully challenge the right of the landlord to admit the plaintiff-respondents as tenants of the land in suit, they could not displace the declaratory decree of the Revenue Court. As to the production of the lease deed, it is obvious that it could be produced only, if it exists, and one can proceed on the assumption that the plaintiff-respondents would not have been slow to produce the lease deed if any such deed existed. In the circumstances I have to proceed on the assumption that there was no lease deed in respect of the tenancy rights claimed by the plaintiff-respondents. Section 55 of the U, P. Tenancy Act does not say that a person can be admitted to a holding only by execution of a deed of lease. It merely enacts that a person who is admitted to a holding by the landlord is entitled to receive a lease deed specifying the particulars mentioned in that section. Section 56 also does not say, unlike that a lease for a period exceed­ing one year or from year to year could be made only by a registered instru­ment. What it says is that it shall be made by a registered deed. Now, the U. P. Tenancy Act, 1939 was enacted for the benefit of the tenants. The power to admit a person as a tenant lay with the landlords whose powers it was intended to curb. The provision for the issue of a lease deed under sec­tion 55 of the Act by the landlord to the tenant as meant for the latters benefit. Under section 3(13) of the U. P. Tenancy Aet a Kabuliat is included within the meaning of the word 'lease'. Now, therefore, a lease of the nature required by section 56 of the U. P. Tenancy Act, could certainly be brought into existence by the execution of a registered Kabuliat. A Kabuliat is executed not by the landlord but by the tenant, and being an unilateral docu­ment, a person who had been admitted as a tenant of the holding could very well execute the Kabuliat and have it registered. In the context in which section 56 is placed, i. e. immediately after section 55, it appears to me that section 26 was also enacted for the benefit of the tenant and imposed an obli­gation on the landlord to grant the latter refused to execute a registered lease, the person who was admitted as tenant could very well seek a declaration his rights under section 59. In such a suit I do not think that the Revenue Court would have refused a declaration of the tenancy rights of a person who as admitted as a tenant by the landlord, simply because the landlord had refused to execute a registered lease deed. In view of these circumstances it is not possible to hold that a tenancy right of the kind claimed by the plaintiff-respondents could not have come into existence except by the execution of a registered deed of lease by their landlord. That being so, the finding of the lower appellate court that the plaintiff-respondents were the hereditary tenants of the land in dispute is, in my view, correct in law and calls for no inter­ference.
(3.) THE learned counsel then urged that the suit was barred by limitation. It does not appear from the points raised before the lower appellate court that this question was canvassed before it However, the learned counsel says that the trail court has on issue no. 4 held that the plaintiffs were in possession over the plots in suit in the years 1951-52 and, therefore, it was not barred either by Article 142 or 144 of the Limitation Act. The learned counsel urged before me that Article 142 or 144 of the Limitation Act had no application to the facts of the case. According to him the suit was one governed by the provisions of section 180 of the U. P. Tenancy Act and the limitation for a suit of that nature was according to him only two years. The argument is on the face it wholly untenable inasmuch as a suit under section 180 of the U. P. Tenancy Act could be filed only before the Revenue Court and the limitation of six years, or 12 years or 2 years, as the case may be, under the schedule to that Act, is the limitation prescribed for a suit under Sec. 180 of the U. P. Tenancy Act before the Revenue Court.;