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Issues: (i) Whether land used only for pasturage and described as old waste was ryoti land so as to attract the jurisdiction of the Revenue Court for ejectment of the tenants and recovery of mesne profits. (ii) Whether the claim for pasturage rent and mesne profits for the relevant faslis was cognizable by the Revenue Court or lay in the Civil Court.
Issue (i): Whether land used only for pasturage and described as old waste was ryoti land so as to attract the jurisdiction of the Revenue Court for ejectment of the tenants and recovery of mesne profits.
Analysis: Land can be treated as ryoti land only if it is cultivable land held for the purpose of agriculture. Land used merely for grazing cattle and not permanently cultivable does not fall within that description. The statutory scheme distinguished between ryoti land, old waste, and waste land let for pasturage, and expressly indicated that admission to waste land for pasturage does not by itself confer occupancy rights or make the land ryoti land. Since the defendants were not ryots and the land was not ryoti land, the provisions enabling ejectment of ryots or tenants of private land in the Revenue Court did not apply.
Conclusion: The Revenue Court had no jurisdiction to order ejectment in respect of the land in question, and the Civil Court retained jurisdiction.
Issue (ii): Whether the claim for pasturage rent and mesne profits for the relevant faslis was cognizable by the Revenue Court or lay in the Civil Court.
Analysis: The statutory jurisdiction for recovery of arrears of rent in the Revenue Court extended only to rent as defined by the Act, namely amounts payable for the use or occupation of land for agricultural purposes and allied payments by ryots as such. A claim for rent arising from pasturage of non-ryoti waste land did not fall within that definition. Likewise, the sum claimed as mesne profits was, in substance, rent under the muchilikas, but not rent of the kind for which the Act conferred exclusive Revenue Court jurisdiction. Accordingly, the ordinary courts were not divested of jurisdiction.
Conclusion: The claim for pasturage rent and mesne profits was not exclusively triable by the Revenue Court and could be entertained by the Civil Court.
Final Conclusion: The orders of the lower courts were set aside to the extent that they had declined Civil Court jurisdiction, and the plaint was directed to be received and the suit tried according to law.
Ratio Decidendi: Land used only for pasturage and not shown to be cultivable agricultural land is not ryoti land, and a claim for rent arising from such non-agricultural pasturage use does not fall within the Revenue Court's exclusive jurisdiction under the Estates Land Act.