BIHAR STATE BOARD OF RELIGIOUS TRUST versus PALAT LALL AND ANOTHER

Citation: [1971] 2 S.C.R. 650 · Decided: 19-10-1970 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: M. HIDAYATULLAH · Disposal: Dismissed

Cited by 1 judgment(s) · cites 1 · see the full citation network in Lexace

Judgment (excerpt)

650 
BIHAR STATE BOARD OF RELIGIOUS TRUST 
v. 
PALAT LALL AND ANOTHER 
October 16, 1970 
[M. HIDAYATULLAfl, C.J. AND A. N. RAY, J.] 
Bilic.r Hindu Religious Trusts Act, 1950-Public and Private 
.Distinction between-Requirements before endo}vrnent can be 
as public. 
Trusts-
regarded 
An uncle of the two respondents made a .will in December, 1908 by 
w.bich certain properties were endowed by him in favour of an idol 
which certain properties were endowed by him in favour of an idol 
will that he had two wives and no son had been born to either of them. 
He nominated his two wives and his sister as "Mutawallies, managers and 
executives" to administer the endowment during their life-time and also 
provided that in consultation with his Guru they should appoint a succes· 
sor to themselves. ·Upon the cpming into force of the Bihar Hindu Reli· 
gious Trusts Act, 1950, a notice was sent to the respondents by the Board 
constituted under the Act calling upon them to file certain particulars as 
required under the provisions of the Act on the view that the properties 
.constituted a Public Hindu Religious Trust. 
The respcndents thereafter 
liled a suit against the Board for a declaration that the said properties 
were not subject to the Act and ·.vere private endowments. 
After con-
sidering substantial oral and documentary evidence, the Trial Court held 
that the endowment was private to which the Act was not applicable. 
An appeal to the High Court was dismissed. 
Tn the appeal to this Court it was contended that it could easily be 
inferred from the facts and circumstances that the endowment was a 
public one. 
The testator was childless and, therefore, thore was no need 
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for him to preserve the property for his family; that he bad dedicated 
large properties for the upkeep of the idol,. and ihe largeness of the pro-
perties indicated that it must have been for the benefit of the worshippers 
drawn from the public and not from the family; that on the extinction 
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-0f the line of shebaits · consisting of the two wives and the sister of the 
testator, the shebaitship was to go to a person of a different community 
on the advice of a stranger and that there was no mention in any of the 
deeds that the public were not to be admitted to the worship of the idol. 
HELD : Dismissing the appeal, 
(i) On the facts, it was clear that the idol had been in the family for 
a number of years and only the family was doing its regular worship; 
there was nothing to show that the public ever looked after this idol or 
were allowed a share in the worship as of right. Nor did the authdr of 
the dedication by his will make it clear that the public were to be admitted 
as of right. The whole arrangement showed that the further looking after 
of the idol was to be the concern of the family, and it was only under 
the nomination of the family that a parti.::ular person of the Vaishavnava 
belief was to be in-charge after the demise of tho members of the family 
who were to become mutawallis after the death of the testator. It was 
-0bviouS that in this family as there was no male issue and, therefore,, there 
was nobody to carry on Worsh~p and make arrangements fOr the seba-puja 
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BillAR RELIGIOUS TRUST v. PALAT LALL (Hidayat111/ah, C.J.) 65 I 
of the 'idol, as had been done in the family for a long time. some other 
kind of arrangement had to be made and this arrangement \Vas made by 
the will. 
No more can be read into it than what was said there. [654 CJ 
(ii) There was no fo:rce in the contention that merely because an 
exemption was claimed in regard to the income of the endowment as 
being for charitable and religious purposes. this would make the endo.w· 
ment a public one .. What a per>on does with a view to claiming excmp· 
tion from income tax or agricultural income-tax, is not decisive of the 
nature of the endowment. 
The nature of the endowment is to be dis· 
covered only from the tenor of the document by which the endowment 
is created, the dealings of the public and tho conduct and hahits of the 
people who visit such· a temple or Thakur Dwara. The claim to exemp· 
lion was with a view to saving some income of the endowed property. 
It misht have been motivated from other considerations and not that it 
wu a public endowment. [655 A·C] 
Babu Bhagwan Din anti others v. Gir Har Saroop and others, referred 
to. 
Deoki Nandan v, Murlidhar [1961] 3 S.C.R. 220; Swami Sa/igrama. 
charya v. Rag

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