Zemindary Lands & Govt Grants

Zamindari Rights :

In India, what would be called free-hold in England, vests in the State till it itself alienates its rights to private individuals. 

The ultimate ownership of the soil thus rests in the State, but upon the soil, in this part of the country, exists two classes of interests. The first is that of the cultivator, who makes that soil yield produce; the second is that of the zamindar, who standing in the position of the middleman, facilitates the recovery by the State of its share of the produce. The share of the State is called "revenue" as distinguished from "rent", which is the share of the zamindar in the produce of the soil. He takes the rent from the cultivator, and out of such rent pays over the share of the State. He is called proprietor; but his proprietorship is qualified by the great incident that if he does not pay the government revenue his proprietorship ceases, much in the same manner as non-payment of a mortgage results in foreclosure or sale of the property. 

Such being the nature of zamindari rights, it is then that upon the maxim that no one can give more than he has, any alienation of land by the zamindar, purporting to make it free of its liability to Government revenue, would be void. 

Upon general principles he may indeed alienate his own right to take rent; but even in respect of such alienations the State is so far interested that the zamindar thereby reduces his own pecuniary means to meet the Government demand of revenue. Such alienations, whether permanent or temporary, have this tendency in effect pro tanto.

Regulation XIX of 1793 was passed to obviate both these evils inter-alia and Section 10 has this doubly aspect. 

On the one hand, it declared the invalidity of "all grants for holding land exempt from the payment of revenue," and, on the other hand, it required and authorized persons possessing "the proprietary right in any estate" "to collect rents from such lands at the rates of the pargana, and to dispossess the grantee of the proprietary right in the land, and to re-annex it to the estate or taluq in which it may be situated." 

These, two aspects of the Regulation appear in other parts of it also, and the sections of the present Rent and Revenue Acts (above referred to) aim at the same two results. 

Under certain conditions they authorize proprietors "to resume such grants or to assess rent on the land"--the former right involving eviction of the grantee, the latter implying that he is left in possession, but is made liable to payment. 

But both these remedies have for their ultimate aim the security of the Government revenue, which the law declares is the first charge upon land, and Section 83 of the Revenue Act declares that "no length of rent-free occupancy of any land, nor any grant of land made by the proprietor, shall release such land from its liability to be charged with the payment of Government revenue."

To use the words of the Lords of the Privy Council in Forbes v. Meer Mahomed Tuquee 18 Moo. I.A. at p. 464 "there is a clear distinction between the grant of an estate burdened with a certain service and the grant of an office the performance of whose duties are remunerated by the use of certain lands. 

And Their Lordships went on to say: "Assuming it to be a grant of the former kind, Their Lordships do not dispute that it might have been so expressed as to make the continued performance of the services a condition to the continuance of the tenure. But in such a case, either the continued performance of the service would be the whole motive to, and consideration for, the grant, or the instrument would, by express words, declare that, the service ceasing, the tenure should determine." 

And no such conditions being proved, Their Lordships said: "Hence the grant may be said to have been made pro servitiis impensis et impendendis--partly as a reward for past, partly as an inducement for future services."