SETH NAND LAL Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Judgment of the Coin t was delivered by

(2.) THESE appeals, by special leave, directed against the full bench decision of the Punjab and Haryana High court in Jaswant Kaur case seek to challenge the vires of some of the provisions of the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1972 (Haryana Act 26 of 1972) and according to the appellants some of the provisions are pivotal and run through the whole Act and, therefore, the entire Act is liable to be struck down.

(3.) AFTER the Principal Act 26 of 1972 was amended as above, several Writ Petition, were filed in the High court of Punjab and Haryana challenging the vires of some of the provisions of the Act. Since the Principal Act as well as the Amending Act 17 of 1976 had been put in Ninth Schedule, the challenge was based on the ground that those provisions were vague, uncertain, ambiguous and mutually inconsistent and, therefore, should be struck down and neither Article 31-A nor Article 31-B of the Constitution could save such provisions. The High court rejected the plea, and in our view rightly, on the ground that a statute enacted by a legislature falling within its competence which did not offend any fundamental rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution and which did not contravene any other provision of the Constitution could not be declared ultra vires either on the ground that its provisions were vague, or uncertain or ambiguous or mutually inconsistent. The court pointed out that unlike the American Constitution, there was no 'due process' clause in our Constitution and, 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 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 mutually 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 were not irreconcilable and all of them fitted well into the general scheme of the Act. The only provision in respect of which relief was granted by the court was S. 20-A which barred the appearance of any legal practitioner before any officer of authority other than the Financial Commissioner in proceedings under the Act, and the court took the view that such a provision was repugnant to S. 14 of the Indian Bar councils Act (which had continued in force in view of S. 30 of the Advocates Act not having 579 come into force) and, therefore, invalid. Subject to holding S. 20-A of the Act to be ultra vires and, therefore, issuing a direction to the State not to enforce the said provision and subject to giving some further directions in the matter of filing declarations etc. before the authorities under the Act, the court dismissed all the Writ Petition. In these appeals the appellants have challenged some of the provisions of the Act on grounds substantially different from those that were urged before the High court.