BAVA C. CHOKKAPPA MUDALIAR & ORS. versus BAVA C. CHOKKAPPA MUDALIAR & ORS.

Citation: [1974] 3 S.C.R. 388 · Decided: 14-02-1974 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: D.G. PALEKAR · Disposal: Appeal(s) allowed

Judgment (excerpt)

388 
BAVA C. CHOKKAPPA MUDALJAR & ORS. 
1'. 
BAVA C. CHOKKAPPA MUDALIAR & ORS. 
F'ebruary ·14, 1974 
[D. G. PALEKAR, V. R. KRISHNA IYER AND R. S. SARKARIA, JJ.J 
Tire 
Madras Hindu 
Religious Endownzents Act, 
1926 (II of 1926)-
. S. 84(1)-Scope of. 
Section 84(1)(b) of the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act," 1926 as 
amended by Act 1 O of 1946 provides that if a dispute arises as to whether a 
trustee is a hereditary trustee as defined in the Act or not such dispute shall be 
decided by the Religious Endowment Board constituted under the Act and no 
court in the exercise of its original jurisdiction shall take cognizance of 
such 
dispute. 
On the question whether a dispute a's to who out of a numb!r of members of 
a family was entitled to succeed to an office, admitted[Y hereditary, fell 
within 
sub-cl. (b) of'· 84(1), 
HELD : that it was· ~ot a dispute which could be entertained by the Board. 
The \'iew expressed in Sastri An111ial v. Pral'afa1•arna Naicker, J.L.R. [1957] 
Madras 631 and A. Kris/11iaswa1ni Raia v. Krishna Raia, I.LR. [1967] 3 l\1adras, 
A 
B 
c 
495, approved. [395 Al 
D 
Gopafaswami Mudaliar v, Thyagar.:1ja 
Mudaliar, 
[1951] 
1 
M.L.J. 
248 
overruled. 
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Civil Appeals Nos. 1792 & 1793 
of 1967. 
Appeals by special leave from the Judgment and order dated the 
23rd March 1961 of the Madras High Court in Appeal No. 88 o[ 1958. 
E 
M. Natesan, T. V. Krishnam11tthi Iyer, K. L. Rathee, Ganesan and 
S. Balakrishnan, for the appellant (in C.A. 1792) and for respondent 
no. 6 (in C.A. 1793). 
· 
S. T. Desai, V. M. Tarkunde, K. Jayaram and R. Chandrasekhar, 
for the appellant (in C.A. 1793). 
A. R. Somnath Iyer and S. Lakshminarasu, for respondent No. 1 
(in both the appeals). 
A. V. Rangam and A. Subhashini, for respondent No. 4 (in both 
the appeals). 
K. Jayaram, for respondents nos. 5 & 6 (in C.A. 1992). 
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by 
PALEKAR, J. These two appeals by special leave arise out of a de.-
cision of the Religious Endowment Board (hereinafter called the 
Board) constituted under Section 10 of the Madras Hindu Religious 
Endowments Act, 1926 (Madras Act No. II of 1926) hereinafter cal-
led the Act. The Board gave the decision in a dispute in O.A. No. 279, 
of 1946 and the principal contention with which we are concerned in' 
these appeals'is whether the Board had jurisdiction to decide that dis-
pute. Other points were dealt with in the course of litigation, but 
since the appellants are entitled to succeed on the ground that the 
F 
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• 
c 
D 
E 
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H 
v. s. MUDALIAll v . •. c. CHOKKAPPA (PaI.kar, J.} 
B~I 
Board had no jurisdiction to entertaiQ the djspqte, it will not b~ neces-
sary for us to deal with the other points. We shall, therefore, confine 
ourselves to the facts which bear upon the point. 
The temple of Sri Tyagarajaswami at Tiruvarur in Tanjore'Distri7t 
is a well-known; ancient temple of the South. There are l 3 kattala1s 
attached to the temple-one of such kattalais being the Ultburai kat-
talai. This kattalai looks after the worship and festivals in the temple . 
The management of this Ulthurai kattalai was vested in two Mudali~r 
families. One was the Bava family and the other was the Vadapath1-
mangalam family. The two families held t~e office of the trusteeship 
by hereditary succession. Prior to 1943, the hereditary trustee repre-
senting the Bava family was one Vaitbilinga Mudaliar and the other 
trustee .representing the Vadapathimangalam 
family was Thiagaraja 
Mudaliar. The latter is one of the principal parties to this litigation 
but the litigation was really with reference to the succession to the qffice 
in the Bava family after Vaithilinga's death. 
Vaithilinga died in 1943 leaving behind him surviving (1) 
bis 
widow Pappu Ammal (2) a daughter, Shivakami Ammal, by another 
wife ( 3) a son of this daughter named Brahadeeswaran ( 4) & ( 5) two 
divided brothers Gopalaswami Mudaliar and Panchapakesa Mudaliar. 
The office of the trustee of the temple was an office, of prestige. 
After Vaithilinga's death Gopalaswami Mudaliar tried to instal him-
self as the trustee in the place of his deceased brother. But Thiaga-
raja Mudaliar the other trustee, did not permit him to work with him 
as a co-trustee. So Gopalaswami complained to the Board by an ap-
'1'lication dated April 22, 1944 purporting to be under section 18 of 
the Act. Tbiagaraja contested the application pointing out that Gopa-
laswami could not succeed, a

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