1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION SECOND APPEAL NO. 949 OF 2007 Bajrang Sitaram Patil .......Appellant versus Bhimrao Sitaram Patil since deceased through L.Rs. 1. Parvati Bhimrao Patil ....... Respondant. Mr. P.S. Dani i/b Mr. S.H. Yadav for the appellant Mr. H.S. Venegaonkar for Respondents 1 to 5. CORAM: A.P. DESHPANDE, J. DATED: 13th MARCH, 2009. P.C.: 1. The appellant in this second appeal is the original defendant against whom a decree for partition and separate possession has been passed. The first appeal filed by the present appellant came to be dismissed and hence this second appeal. 2. The Plaintiff and the defendants are real brothers. The plaintiff instituted a suit by contending that the partition was effected between the two brothers about 40 years prior to the filing of the suit. However, the suit land (agricultural lands) was 2 not partitioned as a tenancy case was pending before the Maharashtra Revenue Tribunal, Pune bearing no. 3/87 and the suit land came to the share of the plaintiff and the defendants on account of compromise entered into with the land lady. The plaintiff further contended that the father of the parties was a tenant of one Mr. Mohite and was cultivating the land and thus the right to acquire the agricultural land was inherited by the parties by virtue of the fact that their father was a tenant. Thus the suit lands are the properties of joint family. The courts below have accepted the case of the plaintiff that the suit land was held by the father of the parties as a tenant, and the land as such would be treated as ancestral property. The defendant has merely placed reliance on the certificate issued under section 32- M of the Bombay Tenancy act in his name alone to the exclution of the plaintiff. It is a matter of record that the father of the plaintiff and the defendant had four sons, two of them expired without leaving behind any legal heir and hence plaintiff and the defendants are the only surviving heirs of their father. The first appellate court has considered the revenue record of the year 1941-42 to 1949-56 which clearly incidate that the father of the plaintiff and the defendant by name Sitaram was in cultivating possession of the suit land. If this be so then right to purchase the land flows from the tenency right accrued to the father of the parties and hence the agricultural land would be ancestral 3 property of the joint family. The view taken by the courts below that the suit land is a joint family property does not need to be interfered with. No substantial question of law emerges for consideration. Hence appeal is summarily dismissed. (A.P. DESHPANDE, J.)