Panchkari Sarkar, J. - (1.) This is an application under section 25 of the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act directed against a decree passed by a Small Cause Court Judge, Alipore, on the 13th January, 1956. in a suit for recovery of rent for four months from the 1st Baisakh 1362 B.S. at the rate of Rs. 75 per month in respect of a non-agricultural tenancy. The opposite party who is a Deity represented by a sebait was the plaintiff in the suit and the decree was passed against the petitioners and also their mother, who was not joined in the application as a petitioner but has been made an opposite party. The tenancy and the arrear of rent were not disputed by the petitioners at the trial court, but an objection was taken that the opposite party being an intermediary, as defined in the West Benal Estates Acquisition Act, 1953 (West Bengal Act I of 1954), and the rights of all intermediaries having vested in the State of West Bengal with effect from the 1st Baisak, 1362 B.S. under the said Act, the opposite party had no right to recover the rent claimed and the petitioners were bound under section 5(d) of the said Act to pay such rent to the State, This objection was, however, overruled and the suit was decreed with costs.
(2.) The very same objection has been taken in the present application, and it has been urged that the decision of the learned Judge was based on misconception and wrong construction of the relevant provisions of the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act.
(3.) Section 4, sub-section (1) of the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act (which will be hereafter referred to as the Act) provides that the State Government may by a notification, declare that with effect from the date mentioned in the notification, an) estates and the rights of every intermediary in each such estate situated in any district or part of a district specified in the notification, shall vest in the State free from all incumbrance's; and sub-section (2) provides that the date mentioned in every such notification shall be the commencement of an agricultural year; and the notifications shall be issued, so as to ensure that the whole area to which this Act extends, vests in the State on or before the first day of Baisakh of the Bengali year 1362.;