1) company cannot purchase agricultural land in Maharashtra for carrying out agricultural activities
2)The purpose of the Bombay Tenancy Act, 1948 is to ensure holding of agricultural land by tenants, labourers and agricultural land holders. Agriculturist as defined in sec.2 (2) of the Act means a person who cultivates land personally; and under section 2 (6) to cultivate personally means to cultivate land on one's own account by one's own labour, or by the labour of any member of one's family, or under the personal supervision of oneself or any member of one's family by hired labour or by servants on wages payable in cash or kind but not in crop share. According to section 2 (5), to cultivate with its grammatical variations and cognate expressions means to till or husband the land for the purpose of raising or improving agricultural produce, whether by manual labour or by means of cattle or machinery, or to carry on any agricultural operation thereon.
Since the word person is defined in section 2 (11) of the Act, its definition as given in the Bombay General Clauses Act, 1904 could not be applied and a company constituted as a juristic person under the Companies Act cannot be considered to be an agriculturist . Having regard to this legal provision, there is no provision under section 63 of the Act for acquisition of agricultural land by companies as non-agriculturist .