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

What the Act governs

The Tamil Nadu Public Trusts (Regulation of Administration of Agricultural Lands) Act, 1961 regulates agricultural land held by public trusts. Its stated purposes are to regulate how such land is administered, whether through personal cultivation or lease, and to regulate relations between public trusts and cultivating tenants.

The Act applies throughout Tamil Nadu. It comes into force on a date appointed by the State Government through a notification.

Land and activities covered

For this Act, agricultural land includes land used or capable of being used for agriculture or related purposes. It can include forest, pasture, plantation, orchard and tope. It does not include:

• A house site.
• Land used exclusively for non-agricultural purposes.

Agriculture includes horticulture, raising crops, grass or garden produce, grazing by an agriculturist, raising manure crops, dairy farming, poultry farming, livestock breeding and growing trees.

A plantation means land used for growing cardamom, cinchona, coffee, rubber or tea. An orchard includes an enclosure or group of fruit or nut-bearing trees forming the main crop, including nandavanams.

Who may be affected

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

• Public religious, charitable and educational trusts holding agricultural land.
• Temples, maths, mosques, churches and other public places of religious worship.
• Public charitable or educational institutions.
• People personally cultivating trust land under an express or implied tenancy agreement.
• Eligible heirs and sub-tenants who contribute their own physical labour, or that of family members, to cultivation.
• Co-operative farming societies formed to cultivate land belonging to a public trust.

A mere intermediary, or the intermediary's heir, is not included as a cultivating tenant. For Chapters III and IV, a co-operative farming society is treated as a cultivating tenant.

Key definitions and administration

• Personal cultivation by a public trust can include cultivation using hired labour, hired stock or wage-paid servants, but not workers paid through a share of produce.
• The cultivating tenant's ceiling area is five standard acres, whether held wholly as a tenant or partly as tenant and partly as owner or possessory mortgagee.
• An authorised officer must be a Revenue Officer not below the rank of Deputy Collector or Revenue Divisional Officer and must be authorised by State Government notification for a specified area.
• Fair rent means the rent payable under Chapter IV.
• Rent Courts and Rent Tribunals are constituted under the Act for their respective areas.