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3. It is necessary to state a few facts in order to understand the basis of the rejection of the appellants' claims by the Tribunal and the contentions advanced before us questioning the correctness of that rejection.

4. It is common ground that the village was an inam estate falling within the definition of Section 3(2)(d) of the Estates Land Act the landholder being entitled only to melvaram in the village. The village of Karungalur formed part of the Tanjore Palace Estate and was allotted to the Senior Prince of Tanjore under the final decree in O.S. No. 3 of 1919 on the file of the District Court, Tanjore West. Karungalur had three hamlets, viz., Kulamangalam, Karungalur thottam and Gudalur thottam and the advance compensation amount deposited represented the sum due for the entire group. The hamlets of Karungalur became the property of the Junior Prince of Tanjore ; he was adjudicated an involvent in I.P. No. 40 of 1933 with the result that these came to be vested in the Official Receiver, Tanjore West. The several appellants originally owned kudivaram interest in the lands in their occupation and at a sale held by the Official Receiver, the melvaram interest of the landholder, the Junior Prince, in their holdings was purchased by the kudivaramdars. Under the provisions of the Madras Abolition Act these appellants would be entitled to the grant of ryotwari pattas in respect of their holdings.

18. No, doubt, these two decisions as also others to which it is not necessary to refer, have laid down that where a kudivaramdar acquired an interest in the melvaram over his holding he did not thereby become a " landholder " within the meaning of Section 3(5). This was meant only as a negation of any merger. If he became a landholder within the meaning of Section 3(5) in respect of his holding, the result would have been, that if he leased the lands in respect of which he admittedly had kudivaram interest his tenant would have become a ryot entitled to occupancy rights under Section 6(1) of the Act and thereby he would have become divested of occupancy right. He would have become a landholder, only if there was a merger and it was held in these decisions that the Explanation to Section 6(6) was designed to avoid this result. That a kudivaramdar who acquired a melvaram interest did not thereby become a "landholder" cannot however, finally dispose of the point arising in these appeals. The question still to be answered is "If the kudivaramdar acquired a melvaram interest and there is no merger of that interest with the kudivaram, which the acquirer already possessed, what is the nature of the acquired interest in his hands ? "If ex hypothesi there is no merger the acquired interest must still be intact. This is how Burn, J., analysed the position in Sreemantha Raja Yarlagada Malikarjuna Prasada Naidu v. Subbiah (1919) 39 M.L.J. 277. The learned Judge said:

It was the same idea that was expressed by Kumaraswamy Sastri, J., in Gadadhara Das v. Suryanarayana Patnalk(1921) 41 M.L.J.97at 105, Where the grantee of the melvaram was himself the occupancy ryot it is difficult to see how the grant of the melvaram interest to him can divest him of that character so as to convert his subtenant into a permanent occupancy ryot....I think it would be reasonable to hold that the mere fact that an occupancy ryot gets an interest in the melyaram would give the sub-tenants (who till then had no rights of occupancy and who could be evicted) rights of permanent occupancy and put the grantee of the melvaram in a decidedly worse position. In all such cases when there is no merger under any of the provisions of the Act, the right of the inamdar as an occupancy ryot remains in him and the effect of his acquiring an interest in the melvaram is not to extinguish his rights as an occupancy ryot and convert him into a landholder so as to bring his sub-tenant within the provisions of Section 6(1).

21. Learned Counsel for the respondents urged that the true nature of the appellants' interest before the notified date could best be described by saying that they held the ryoti lands freed from the obligation to pay rent to the landholder and that this beneficial tenure was adversely affected by reason of the provisions of Section 3(g) and Section 11 of the Abolition Act--injurious affections for which the Act provided no compensation. We are unable to accept the theory underlying this submission which proceeds upon the basis of some kind of merger. The underlying postulate of the respondents' argument was something like this. Where Section 8(1) applies and there is a merger the occupancy right gets extinguished and the landholder obtains possession, so to speak, of the land comprising the holding without the transfer to him of the tenure on which the previous occupant held it. In cases covered by Section 6-A the landholder part becomes extinguished and gets merged in the ryoti interest, so that thereafter the person holds not two distinct and separate interests but a ryoti interests alone though on modified terms. We cannot agree with this theory which in effect introduces, as if by a side wind, the concept of a merger. In express terms Section 6-A of the Estates Land Act states that there is no merger in cases of acquisitions of melvaram interests by a kudivaramdar. If merger be negatived, the interests must continue to be separate and held under distinct titles as Burn, J., observed. Nor is there any possibility of invoking any Common Law doctrine of merger in such cases, because if it were applied it is the smaller interest that will get merged in the larger, the carved out in the reversion, with the result that it would be the kudivaram interest that will get extinguished, if the Common Law rule applied. As the statute has made express provision against the destruction of the ryoti right, the Common Law doctrine cannot apply to such cases. We are consequently unable to accept the theory that as a result of the acquisition of the melvaram interest no separate melvaram interest inhered in the acquirer but that only the nature of I he incidents.of the right he already possessed as an occupancy ryot underwent some modification;