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CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeal No. 611 of 1964. Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated 'September 10, 1962 of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in C.R.P. No. 1128 of 1959.

A. V. Rangam, for the appellants.

P. Ram Reddy, Triyambak Rao Deshmukh and R. Vasudev Pillai, for the respondent.

7 1 3 The Judgment of the Court was delivered by Miter, J. This is an appeal by special leave, from a judgment in a batch of civil revision petitions decided- by the Andhra Pradesh High Court in September, 1962. The facts necessary for the disposal of this appeal are as follows. One Ramalingayya died in the year 1941 possessed of considerable properties including the lands which formed the subject matter of the above mentioned civil revision petitions. Before his death, he had adopted the petitioner before the High Court one Chimmapudi Subrahmanyam, the respondent before this Court. He came into possession of the properties of his adoptive father after the latter's death. Ramalingayya's widow however raised a dispute about the factum and validity of the adoption and claimed the properties as the heir of her husband. Subrahmanyam filed a suit in the court of the District Munsif, Khammam for a declaration that he was the adopted son of Ramalingayya. Pending the disposal of the suit, however, Ramalingayya's widow, who was the 4th respondent in C.R.P. No.36 of 1952 before the High Court claimed, to have her name registered in the register maintained under the Hyderabad Land Revenue Act of 1317 F. by virtue of the provisions of s. 59 of that Act. The land revenue authorities registered the widow Kaveramma as pattedar and dispossed the adopted son of all the lands putting Kaveramma in possession thereof. The adopted son amended his plaint by including a prayer for possession. During the pendency of the suit, the widow Kaveramma was prohibited by an order of injunction from dealing with the lands in any way. This was sometime in the year 1944. The suit of the adopted son was decreed, by the trial, court on March 24, 1951 both with regard to the declaration of the right of adoption and succession as also possession over' the lands mentioned in the schedule to the plaint. Thereafter, some time in the year 1952 (the exact date does not appear from the records before us) Kaveramma leased the lands which were tile subject matter of the civil revision petitions to the appellants before this court. This is borne out by the judgment of, the District Collector, Khammam dated March 19, 1959 and the petition for special leave to this Court dated October 18, 1962. Kaveramma preferred an appeal from the decree passed against her and this was dismissed by the High Court in 1954. The adopted son put the decree in execution and got delivery of posses- sion through the court in August 1954. It appears that very soon thereafter, in September 1954 the appellants surrendered possession of the lands to him and executed a deed in respect thereof. Notwithstanding that, about a year afterwards, they filed a petition on October 7, 1955 for possession of the lands alleging that they had been in possession for "the last six years in the 71 4 capacity of tenants". Their allegation further was that the adopted son and his mother had dispossessed them from the suit lands and they therefore prayed for being put back into possession. This claim was preferred under S. 32(1) of the Hyderabad Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1950. The Tahsildar made an order in favour of the appellants in July 1958 which was upheld in appeal to the Collector in March, 1959. This led to the revision applications before the Andhra Pradesh High Court. The High Court allowed the Civil Revision Petitions and this has led to the appeal. Under S. 32(1) of the Hyderabad Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1950 (hereinafter referred to as the 'Act') "a tenant or an agricultural labourer or artisan entitled to possession of any land or dwelling house under any of the provisions of this Act may apply to the Tahsildar in writing in the prescribed form for such possession." "Tenant" has been defined in S. 2(v) of the Act as meaning an asami shikmi who holds lands on lease and includes a person who is deemed to be a tenant under the provisions of the Act. The relevant portion of s. 5 of the Act provides as follows "A person lawfully cultivating any land belonging to another person shall be deemed to be a tenant if such land is not cultivated personally by the land-holder if such person is not-

(a) a member of the landholder's family, or
(b) a servant on wages payable in cash or kind, but not in crop share or a hired labourer cultivating the land under the personal supervision of the landholder or any member of the landholder's family, or
(c) a mortgagee in possession :
The appellants before this Court never were the tenants of Ramalingayya. They were induced on the land by his widow after the decree of the suit for declaration of title and possession in favour of the adopted son. After the passing of the decree, the possession of the widow could only be that of a trespasser and it was not open to her to create any right in the land in favour of anybody. It was argued however both before the High Court and before this Court that the appellants were entitled to the benefit of s. 5, as they were lawfully cultivating the land and should therefore be deemed to be tenants of such land. It was contended that the word "lawfully" was to be taken in conjunction with the words "cultivating" and the legislature intended to protect the actual tillers of the soil even if the person who, 7 1 5 put them in possession was found not to have any title to the land. This would indeed be a very strange provision of the law and would, if upheld, amount to encouraging trespass on the land by persons who had no shadow of title and creating rights in favour of others although they themselves had no title to the land. The meaning of the word 'asami shikmi' in the definition of the tenant in s. 2 (v) does not appear from any provision of the Act but our attention was drawn to the Hyderabad Land Revenue Act, s. 2(13), according to which "'asami shikmi' means a lessee, whether holding under an instrument or tinder an oral agreement, and includes a mortgagee of an asami shikmi's rights with possession, but does not include a lessee holding directly under Government". In our opinion, this does not help the appellants for the definition shows that a person who claims to be an asami shikmi' had to be a lessee either holding under a document of lease or under an oral agreement.