Tamil Nadu Public Trusts (Regulation of Administration of Agricultural Lands) Act, 1961, Act 57 of 1961

Scope and purpose

The Tamil Nadu Public Trusts (Regulation of Administration of Agricultural Lands) Act, 1961 applies throughout Tamil Nadu. It regulates how public trusts administer agricultural land, whether through personal cultivation or leases, and governs their relationship with cultivating tenants. Its stated aims include serving the common good and increasing agricultural production.

Who and what it covers

The Tamil Nadu Public Trusts (Regulation of Administration of Agricultural Lands) Act, 1961 applies to:

• Public trusts created for religious, charitable or educational public purposes.
• Temples, maths, mosques, churches and other places used by a community or section of a community for public religious worship.
• Public charitable and educational institutions.
• Cultivating tenants, including certain heirs and sub-tenants who contribute their own physical labour or that of family members.
• Co-operative farming societies formed to cultivate land belonging to a public trust.

A mere intermediary is not treated as a cultivating tenant.

Land and agricultural use

The Tamil Nadu Public Trusts (Regulation of Administration of Agricultural Lands) Act, 1961 covers land used or capable of being used for agriculture or related purposes. This includes forests, pasture land, plantations, orchards and topes.

Agriculture includes horticulture, crops, grass, garden produce, grazing by an agriculturist, manure crops, dairy farming, poultry farming, livestock breeding and growing trees. Plantations include land used for cardamom, cinchona, coffee, rubber or tea.

The definition of land excludes house sites and land used exclusively for non-agricultural purposes.

Key provisions and relevance

The Tamil Nadu Public Trusts (Regulation of Administration of Agricultural Lands) Act, 1961 provides the following framework:

• Personal cultivation by a public trust may use hired labour, hired stock or wage-paid servants, but wages cannot be a share of produce.
• A cultivating tenant may hold land wholly as a tenant or partly as tenant and partly as owner or possessory mortgagee.
• The cultivating tenant ceiling area is five standard acres.
• Standard-acre calculations vary according to land type, irrigation, land revenue assessment and location, with separate measures stated for the Kaniyakumari district.
• Fair rent means rent payable under Chapter IV.
• Government-authorised Revenue Officers of at least Deputy Collector or Revenue Divisional Officer rank may exercise functions under the Act.
• Rent Courts and Rent Tribunals are constituted for relevant areas.

A buyer, owner, trustee or tenant should check whether the property is agricultural land held by a public trust and whether anyone occupying it qualifies as a cultivating tenant.