SANKARACHARIAR OF KUMBAKONAM BY HIS AGENT, PATTABHIRAMA AIYAR Vs. VARADA PILLAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case the suit was brought by the petitioner, a landlord, against the defendant, his tenant, for the recovery of rent of the Fasli year 1310. Before suit a patta had been tendered, but was not accepted. At the trial the defendant urged that certain terms in the patta, to be referred to and considered later on, were such as to entitle him to refuse to accept the patta. The District Munsif agreed with the contention and dismissed the suit. The petitioner whilst denying that the terms of the patta referred to were open to such objection contended that, even if they were, the defendant was estopped from raising any such question in the present suit inasmuch as pattas containing precisely similar terms had been accepted for a series of years in respect of the same holding.

(2.) Without taking any evidence as to the truth of the allegations on which this contention was based the District Munsif held that even assuming the allegations to be true they could not support a plea of estoppel. Is this conclusion sustainable? Now there can be no doubt that if previous to the year to the rent of which the suit relates, the tenant had in express terms told the landlord that pattas containing the terms objected to were to be taken as proper pattas and that the landlord might act on that footing the tenant would be precluded from impugning similar pattas tendered subsequently unless and until he had withdrawn his previous representation by communicating to the landlord that he objected to the terms in question in circumstances permitting the latter suing the former in time to obtain an adjudication under Section 9 of the Rent Recovery Act as to the term of a proper patta and to compel the acceptance of such a patta for the year in respect of which the tender was duly made.

(3.) It follows that, if the allegations on behalf of the petitioner about the acceptance for a series of years of precisely similar pattas be true, that constituted a representation by conduct that the landlord might proceed on the footing that the pattas were proper ones, which, of course, would have the same effect as a representation in so many words. It is in the interests of the tenant that the law imposes on the landlord the duty of tendering is patta setting forth the various matters referred to in Section 4 of the Rent Recovery Act. It being-open to the tenant to refuse to take any patta containing terms not considered by him proper, no other conclusion is possible when the patta is accepted than that the tenant asserts by implication that the patta is or may be taken to be a proper one especially when this conduct is repeated from year to year.