Personal agriculturist privilege cannot shield a defendant firm unless the firm itself satisfies the statutory description.

A statutory agriculturist privilege is personal and cannot be used by a defendant firm merely because some partners individually qualify as agriculturists. The Court treated the Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act as conferring a personal defence, distinguished between the firm as a sued business entity and the separate status of its partners, and read the term "person" in context as not extending the privilege to a firm on that basis alone. The firm could invoke the protection only if it independently satisfied the statutory description in its own right. The Court therefore upheld jurisdiction to try the suit.

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Issues: Whether a defendant firm can invoke the agriculturist status of its partners under the Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act to defeat the Court's jurisdiction and require the suit to be brought only in the place where the partners reside.

Analysis: The definition of agriculturist and the protection afforded by the Dekkhan Agriculturists' Relief Act were treated as personal privileges. A firm, although a compendious description of its partners, is sued as a business entity carrying on business in a particular place, and the law draws a distinction between defences available to the firm and purely personal defences of individual partners. The provisions governing firm suits and execution also recognize that liability and pleading in the firm's name are distinct from the separate position of each partner. Reading the Act in that context, the reference to agriculturist was held to apply only to a firm in a limited sense where the firm itself earns its livelihood by agriculture, not merely because one or more partners may individually be agriculturists. The contextual meaning of 'person' in the definition was also considered inconsistent with extending the privilege to a body of individuals in the manner contended for by the defendant firm.

Conclusion: The defendant firm could not set up the agriculturist contention, and the Court had jurisdiction to try the suit.

Ratio Decidendi: A statutory privilege conferred on an agriculturist is personal in nature and cannot be invoked by a firm unless the firm itself satisfies the statutory description in its own right.

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