TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1980 (5) TMI 101
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....o the policy of the State towards securing the principles specified in cls. (b) and (c) of Art. 39 of the Constitution. The Act was included in the Ninth Schedule to the Constitution on 7-9-1974 (vide: Item 72), and, thereby it came under the protective umbrella of Act. 31-B of the Constitution; however, on 9-9-1974 in Saroj Kumari's A.I.R. 1975 Punjab & Haryana 353 case a Division Bench of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, being apparently unaware of such inclusion, struck down certain provisions of the Act on the ground that those provisions violated the rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution. The Division Bench also held that the provisions were not saved by Art. 31-A of the constitution as those provision which mainly related to 'Family Unit', could not be said to be in furtherance of Art. 39(b) and (c) of the Constitution. In so holding, the Division Bench relied on a Full Bench decision of that Court in Sucha Singh's case where similar provisions of the Punjab Land Reforms Act (Act 10 of 1973) had been struck down. The Full Bench decision in Sucha Singh's case (supra) has since been reversed by this Court in Civil Appeal No. 1040 of 1976 (reported in AIR 1977 SC 915....
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....nd, therefore, Indian Courts could not declare a statute invalid on the ground that it contained vague, uncertain, ambiguous or mutually inconsistent provisions, and that it was the duty and function of the Indian Court, in relation to each forensic situation, to examine the language of the law, the context in which it was made, to discover the intention of the Legislature and to the interpret the law to make effective and not to frustrate the legislative intent and in that behalf it could always call in aid well known canons of interpretation and even where the provisions of a statute appeared to be mutual inconsistent there were. several well- known rules of interpretation to guide the Court in giving a proper meaning to the provisions of a statute, such as, the rule of harmonious construction, the rule that special shall prevail over the general etc. After negativing the main plea, the Court went on to examine the concerned provisions which were said to be vague or uncertain and mutually inconsistent and came to the conclusion that certain expressions which were said to be vague were not so vague but had definite import and connotation and that apparently inconsistent provisions....
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.... the ground of inconsistency with or abridgement of any of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by Arts. 14, 19 and 31. The constitutional validity of Art. 31- A has all along been upheld by this court since Sankar Prasad's case and its validity was not put in issue in Keshavananda Bharati's case but the constitutional validity of Art. 31C was sought to be canvassed by reference to Art. 31A. Moreover, consequent upon the introduction of Art. 31A in the Constitution in 1951 this Court has repelled the challenged to land reform laws as violative of fundamental rights conferred by Arts. 14, 19 or 31 in State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh. In our view, it is manifestly clear that the Principal Act (26 of 1972) together with. all the amendments made therein which essentially is meant for imposition of ceiling on agricultural holdings and acquisition and distribution of the surplus area to landless and weaker sections of the society is in substance and reality an enactment dealing with agrarian reform and squarely falls within Art. 31A of the Constitution and as such will enjoy the immunity mentioned above. The challenges made before us to some specific provisions of the Act will, therefore, ....
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....agricultural landholding and it provides that notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any law, custom, usage or agreement, no person shall be entitled to hold whether as landowner or tenant or as a mortgagee with possession or partly in one capacity or partly in another, land within the State of Haryana exceeding the permissible area on or after the appointed day (which under s. 3(c) is 24-1-71). Section 3(m) defines person as including inter alia family. The Explanation to s. 7 is important which provides for clubbing and says that where the person is a family including the separate unit, if any the land owned or held by such person together with the land owned or held by the members of the family and the separate unit shall be taken into account for the purposes of calculating the permissible area. The next important provision is s. 4 which deals with permissible area and sub-ss.(1), (2) and (3) thereof are material to the point at issue and these provisions run thus: "4(1) The permissible area in relation to a landowner or tenant or mortgagee with possession or partly in one capacity or partly in another, or person or family consisting of husband, wife and upto th....
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....s similar land of his own (say 54 acres) then the permissible area for the family will be 108 acres after clubbing the two holdings under s.4(3) and there will be no question of any augmentation of area for the family but in cases where the separate unit (adult son) owns or holds no land of his own but is living with the family the primary unit's holding gets augmented up to two units, that is to say, the family will be entitled to retain 108 acres and the balance will be surplus simply because the adult son is living with the family; but no such augmentation will occur if unmarried daughter or daughters are living with the family or if the adult son is living away separately from the family. Mr. Tarkunde appearing for the appellants, therefore, contended that if the concept of family as artificially defined in s.3(f) is worked out in s.4(1), 4(3) and 7, gross inequalities result and he explained the resulting gross inequalities by giving the following illustration: in cases where the separate units do not own or hold any land of their own, the primary unit of family consisting of father, mother and three minor children under s.4(1) will be able to retain with the family one unit ....
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....fore, the said provision was violative of Art. 14 of the Constitution and since it was the basis of Chapter II the whole Chapter fell with it. Counsel urged that the ratio of these two decisions of this Court squarely applied to instant case and since the said provisions ran through the major sections of Chapter III of the act the whole Chapter was liable to be struck down. It is not possible to accept the contention of Mr. Tarkunde for two reasons. It is true that provisions pertaining to artificial definition of family and the adoption of double standards for fixation of ceiling contained in the instant Act are similar to those which obtained in the Kerala Agrarian Relations Act, 1961 and the Madras Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceiling on land) Act, 1961, but even so, there are two distinguishing features which would make the ratio of those two decisions inapplicable to the instant case. In the first place, in both these decisions it was an admitted position that the concerned enactments were not governed by or protected under Art.31-A of the Constitution and it was in the absence of such protection that the attack to the material provisions of the enactments on the ground of viola....
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....is of the conclusions of the Chief Ministers' Conference (23rd July 1972), and extracts from Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings by P.S. Appu published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India in 1972, has been placed before the Court from which it will appear that the State had applied its mind seriously to these questions: whether family should be adopted as a unit instead of an individual for applying ceiling on land holdings, what should be the size of the family, why artificial definition of the family should be adopted and why adoption of double standard-one for the primary unit of the family and another in respect of a separate unit when living with the family was left necessary, what type of and in what cases clubbing should be prescribed etc., and after going through this material we do find that all these questions were considered having regard to the social and economic realities of our rural life and with a view to nullifying the transfers effected in favour of close relations for the purpose of avoiding the impact of ceiling legislation. It has been pointed out that a large number of alternatives were considered, that every alternative was beset with difficulti....
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.... constitutionally, we find considerable force in this submissions. It is, therefore, not possible to strike down an enactment particularly the enactment dealing with agrarian reform which has been put on the Statute Book with the avowed purpose of bringing about equality or rather reducing the inequality between the haves and the have not, as being violative of Art. 14 of the Constitution simply because it has failed to make a provision for what was regarded as an exceptional case or a rare contingency. In our view, the material furnished on behalf of the State Government by way of justification for adopting an artificial definition of family and a double standard for fixing ceiling is sufficient to repel the attack on these provisions under Art. 14. However, before parting with this point we might like to observe that the State of Haryana should consider sympathetically the case of unmarried major daughters living with the family and for that matter even the case of a divorced daughter who has come back to the family by providing for addition of some more land to the permissible area of the primary unit of the family for each such unmarried major daughter or such divorced daughter....
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....to retain as the permissible area and gives away his wife's land as surplus, he will do so at his peril, for in the land so retained as permissible area he and his wife shall have a share in the same proportion in which they owned or held their lands before the selection of the permissible area. In our view, therefore, there is no question of any discrimination resulting to the wife from the right of selection being given to the husband under s. 9(4) (c) of the Act. Similar contention was urged by Mr. Tarkunde with reference to s. 8 of the Act which prohibits all transfers of land in excess of the permissible area, except a bona fide transfer, after the appointed day and declares that such transfers shall not affect the right of the State Government to the surplus area to which it could be entitled but for such transfer. Under sub-s. (3) it is provided that if any person transfers any land after the appointed day in contravention of sub-s. (1), the land so transferred shall be deemed to be owned or held by that person in calculating the permissible area and his surplus area over and above the permissible area will be determined by ignoring the transfer and in case the area left wi....
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....iding that no person shall be entitled to hold, whether as a landowner or as a tenant or as a mortgagee with possession or partly in one capacity or partly in other, land within the State of Haryana exceeding the permissible area on or after the appointed day (24.1.1971). "Permissible area" under s. 3(1) means the extent of land specified as such in s. 4. For the purpose of determination of permissible area s. 4(1) divides land into three categories and prescribes the permissible area in respect of each of the said categories and, as indicated earlier, it is 7.25 hectares (=18 acres) for category under s. 4(1)(a), 10.9 hectares (=27 acres) for category under s. 4(1)(b) (styled 'B' category land' under Rule 2) and 21.8 hectares (=54 acres) for category under s.4(1)(c) (styled 'C category land' under Rule 2). Section 4(5) further sub-divides land falling under s.4(1)(a) into two classes: (i) land under irrigation from a canal or State tube-well (styled 'A category land' under Rule (2) and (ii) land under irrigation from privately owned tube-wells, pumping sets, etc. (styled 'AA category land' under Rule 2) and the inter relation between these two classes is indicated in s. 4(5) thus:....
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....fied against such canal in Schedule 'A'. The figure thus arrived at shall be treated as 'B' category land and the remaining area of such land shall be treated as 'C' category land; (b) where land is commanded for irrigation by a non perennial/restricted perennial canal, the area of such land shall be multiplied by the irrigation intensity ratio specified against each canal in Schedule 'A'. The figure thus arrived at shall be treated as 'B' category land and the remaining area of such land shall be treated as 'C' category land; Provided that the extent of land described in the revenue record as 'Thur' or 'Kallar' shall be excluded from the commanded area for the purpose of calculations and shall be treated as 'C' category land; (c) where land is commanded for irrigation by a Government tubewell, the area of such land shall be multiplied by half of the irrigation intensity ratio specified against Government tubewell in Schedule 'A'. The figure thus arrived at shall be treated as 'A' category land and the remaining area of such land shall be treated as 'C' category land; (d) where irrigation by canal water or Government tubewell is supplemented by water drawn from privately owned ....
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....d held by him exclusively falls within one or the other category his permissible area would get straightaway determined by the extent specified in the section against each category and it is only when a land-holder has lands of more than one category that his permissible area shall have to be determined on the basis of evaluation to be made in the prescribed manner under s. 4(4) read with Rules 5(1) and 5(2). This is made clear by the opening words of Rule 5(1), namely, "the land held by a person shall be evaluated by converting various categories into 'C' category land according to the following formula". In other words, Rules 5(1) and 5(2) come into play only when a land-holder is holding lands of various categories. Further, it cannot be disputed that 'prescribed manner' is to be found in both the Rules, namely, Rules 5 (1) and 5 (2) and not merely in one or the other, but it is clear that the two Rules deal with different topics and operate in different fields; whereas Rule 5(1) indicates the inter relation between different categories of land by prescribing the equating formula, Rule 5(2) provides for mathematical formula for arriving at the correct figures of different catego....
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....plus. There is no reduction of 'C category land' from 21.8 hectares to 13.88 hectares as contended, for if out of 25 hectares 21.8 hectares were to be allowed to the land- holder as 'C' category land by invoking Sec. 4 (1) or only Rule 5 (1) that will be ignoring the fact that out of his total holding an area to the extent of 7.12 hectares has the potential of 'A' category land and, therefore, giving him 21.8 hectares as 'C' category land would be clearly wrong. In our view, therefore, there is no substance in any of the challenges made to Rule 5(2) of the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Rules, 1973. Counsel for the appellants feebly argued that the compensation payable in respect of the surplus land that is acquired or gets vested in the State Government as specified in s. 16 is illusory. We find that the amount payable for such surplus land that vests in the State Government is to be calculated at the rates shown in the Table given below s. 16(1) and it is clear that the rates are based on the actual quality of the soil and its yield and the same cannot be said to be illusory. In any case no materials have been placed before us from which we could infer that the rates shown in ....
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....pellate authority but by inserting sub-ss. (7) and (8) by Act 40 of 1976, a fetter was put on this unrestricted right which was unconstitutional; secondly, even the mellowing down of the condition by Act 18 of 1978 did not have the effect of removing the vice of unconstitutionality, inasmuch as even the conditions imposed under the amended sub-s. (7) were so onerous in nature that they either virtually took away the vested right of appeal or in any event rendered it illusory. Both these contentions were rejected by the High Court and in our view rightly. It is well settled by several decisions of this Court that the right of appeal is a creature of a statute and there is no reason why the legislature while granting the right cannot impose conditions for the exercise of such right so long as the conditions are not so onerous as to amount to unreasonable restrictions rendering the right almost illusory (vide the latest decision in Anant Mills Ltd. v. State of Gujarat A.I.R. 1975 S.C. 1234 Counsel for the appellants, however, urged that the conditions imposed should be regarded as unreasonably onerous especially when no discretion has been left with the appellate or revisional author....