VASANT GANPAT PADAVE Vs. ANANT MAHADEV SAWANT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This case has been referred to a Three Judge Bench by a detailed judgment of a Division Bench of this Court reported as Vasant Ganpat Padave v. Anant Mahadev Sawant, 2019 2 SCC 788. The relevant facts that are necessary for determination of the controversy before us are set out in paragraphs 3 to 5 of the referral order as follows:

(2.) After setting out various provisions of the Maharashtra Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), as amended, and after referring to various judgments of this Court dealing, in particular, with Section 32-F of the Act, the Division Bench then stated:

(3.) We have heard Shri Aniruddha Joshi, learned Advocate for the Appellant and Shri Ajit S. Bhasme, learned Senior Advocate for the Respondent. Shri Joshi painstakingly took us through various provisions of the 1948 Act and was at pains to point out that it was a social welfare legislation enacted in furtherance of an Agrarian Reform Programme and was, therefore, covered by Article 31A of the Constitution of India. He laid great emphasis, in particular, upon the Amendment Acts of 1956 and 1969. By the first mentioned Amendment Act, the statutory scheme was to divest an absentee landlord of his title and vest title directly in the cultivating tenant of agricultural land. The landlord was given only a limited right to ask for resumption of his land provided certain very stringent conditions were met, provided that such application was made on or before Tillers' Day i.e. 1st April, 1957. He argued that in the case of three categories of persons, namely, widows, minors and persons suffering from a disability, the right of the cultivating tenant to become owner was only postponed, and Section 32-F must be read narrowly so as not to interfere with the statutory right of purchase of the cultivating tenant. The 1969 Amendment made this clear, but was limited only to one of the three categories, namely, minors. According to him, therefore, to sub- serve the object sought to be achieved by the 1956 Amendment, it is clear that whether a cultivating tenant is a tenant under a minor on the one hand, or a widow or a person with a disability on the other, should make no difference to the fact that once the landlord's disability ceases, the tenant must first know that such disability has ceased before he can meaningfully exercise the statutory right given to him within the period prescribed. According to him, all the Division Bench Judgments of this Court, which have held that such knowledge is immaterial, are wrong in law and need to be overruled. He stated that a manifestly absurd result would be reached if we were to so construe Section 32-F of the Act. According to him, the one year within which the cultivating tenant may exercise his statutory right of purchase is only after the period of disability has ceased, in that, for example, the widow has died and one year has elapsed from the date of her death within which she has not exercised any right to resume the land. If the Division Bench Judgments of this Court are correct, then since the period of one year from this date has also elapsed for the reason that the tenant had no knowledge of the widow's death and, therefore, was not able to apply in time, the result would be that such lands would then have to be distributed under Section 32-P, under which the first preference is given again to the absentee landlord who may then be given back this land to the extent and in the manner provided by the Act. This would turn the Object of the 1956 Amendment on its head, as an absentee landlord would, after not availing of any right to resumption, get back agricultural land from a cultivating tenant only because the cultivating tenant had no knowledge of a fact which was exclusively within the landlord's domain. According to him, therefore, applying the golden rule of interpretation, if the literal reading of Section 32-F were to lead to this absurd result, it is possible for us as interpreters of the law to add or subtract words which would remove this absurdity, which can only be the counting of the one year period, so far as the cultivating tenant is concerned, from the date of knowledge of the death of the widow. He cited a number of judgments in support of this proposition. He also argued that in any event, if Section 32-F were to be construed literally, it would violate Article 14 as it would discriminate between cultivating tenants who are similarly situate, namely, tenants whose statutory right to become owners has been postponed on account of the landlord's disability. Whereas in the case of minors, the landlord is bound to intimate the tenant of the date on which such minor attains majority, so that he may exercise his statutory right in a meaningful way, there is no such obligation on a widow's successors to inform the tenant of the death of the widow, resulting in persons who are similarly situate being deprived of their statutory right for no fault of theirs, and contrary to the Object sought to be achieved by the 1956 Amendment.