Case: The State of Madras represented by The Collector of Ramanathapuram Vs. Karumuthu Thiagarajan Chettiar

1. The respondent as purchaser of certain Inam lands in villagefiled a suit disputing the power of the State of Madras to issue notifications in respect of that village under Act 30 of 1947 as the village ofwas not an estate as defined in cl. (d)(2) of S. 3 of the Madras Estates Land Act, 1908, that is, it was not an "Inam village of which the grant had been made, confirmed or recognized by the Government." It is conceded that the notification could not issue if the respondents contention about the village was right. Now, it is well settled and not in question that except in the cases covered by the explanations in cl. (d) the Inam village referred to in this definition must be a whole village, that is, the whole village must have been granted as Inam. No question arises in in the present case as to the application of the explanations.2. The respondent advanced three contentions in support of his case that SiruvengaiPeruvengai was not an estate within S. 3 (2)(d). He first said thatSiruvengaiPeruvengai was not awhole village but was a part of the village of Tirukkalapatti. Then he said that the grant of the Inam had not been to a single person but there weredifferent grants topersons so that there is not one grant of the village ofLastly, he said that what had been confirmed by the Inam Commissioner was a grant of half of the village and not of the whole village. The trial Court rejected all these contentions and dismissed the suit. The High Court of Madras on appeal agreed with trial Court on the second contention but reversed its decision accepting the first and third contentions advanced by the respondent. It is against this judgment of the High Court that the State of Madras has come in appeal to this Court.

Court's reasoning:
7. An Inam village is an "estate" within the meaning of S. 3(2) (d) of the Madras Estates Land Act if the grant was made, confirmed or recognised by the Government notwithstanding that subsequent to the grant, the village has been partitioned among the grantees or theof the grantee or grantees. In the present case the grant was not made by the British Government, it was a grant confirmed or recognised by that Government. Confirmation of the grant of a named village, is within S. 3(2) (d) if some lands had previous to the grant been alienated by the proprietor, and he was by virtue of the alienation incompetent to convey the entire area of the village. That is made explicit by the Explanation which was added by the Madras Estates Land (Amendment) Act, II of 1945.The enquiry before the Inam Commissioner involved at least two distinct stepsEnquiry as to what was the original grant; and(ii) What are should be confirmed or recoginsed in favour of a claimant. In holding an enquiry into the first step, the Inam Commissioner could not be seeking to confirm or recognise the grant.The Commissioner was thereby laying a foundation for making the order of confirmation or recognition. In assuming that a conclusion on the first automatically resulted in confirmation of the grant the learned Judge obliterated the distinction between the two. In our view the formula devised by Subba Rao, J. in Somasundarams case, AIR 1953 Mad 246   is substantially correct.13. Nistala Seshayya Bhukta v. Vasu Bageyya. ILR (1962) Andh Pra 1 : (AIR 1962 Andh Pra 37 FB) on which reliance was placed by counsel for the State of Madras really fell under explanation (3) in S. 3 (2) and with that explanation we are not concerned in the present appeal. That was a case where a part of the originalgrant of the whole village had been resumed by the British Government and what was confirmed was the rest of the grant. It was found that by the time of the Inam enquiry the village minus what was resumed, was understood to be the Inam village and that was confirmed. It was no doubt also held that as the entire area that was available for confirmation was confirmed, the case came within cl. (b) of S. 3 (2). This is not the case before us for here was nothing to prevent the Inam Commissioner from confirming as part of the original grant, the lands in the possession of zamindar of Shivganga; the entire area of the village was available to him for confirmation. We do not think that this case affords any assistance.