RAMAVARMABHARATHANTHAMPURAM Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All the parties are represented by counsel and we have heard them in extenso. We therefore proceed to pass a speaking order.

(2.) The princely family of Cochin with a proletarian plurality of members has been the cynosure of special legislation's, the last of which is Act 15 of 1978, the target of attack in this special leave petition. Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution have been the ammunition used by the petitioner in the High Court and here to shoot down the legislation as ultra vires. A brief sketch of the family law of the Cochin royalty may serve to appreciate the schemes of the latest legislation under challenge. The Maharaja of Cochin, reigned and ruled over a pretty princely State, Cochin, which is now an integral part of the Kerala State. When the curtain of history rose to find India free, the constellation of princedoms fused into Independent India's democratic geography. Cochin and Travancore finally fell in with this trend. As a first step they were integrated into the Travancore Cochin State which came into being on July 1, 1949. Two days before this constitutional merger, the Maharaja of Cochin issued a Proclamation to provide for the impartiality, administration and preservation of the Royal Estate and the Palace Fund through a Board of Trustees. A small process of family legislation on the Cochin Palace followed the political transformation of the State. The Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the Palace Fund (Partition) Act, 1961 (Act 16 of 1916) was the first, the primary purpose of which was to undo the impartiality of the royal estate as declared by the Proclamation of 1949. The shares of the members, the mode of division and the machinery for partition were statutory prescribed by Sections 4 and 5 of the said Act. The basics of those two sections were that on a majority of the major members of the royal family expressing their wish to be divided, the Maharaja would consider whether it was in the interest of the family to partition the estate amount the members and, if he did, direct the Board of Trustees to proceed with the partition under his supervision and control. Each member, including a child in the womb, was eligible for a single share on an equal basis. The privileges of the Maharaja were preserved as his personal right but vis-a-vis family assets feudal 'primogeniture' fell to modern egalite, within limits.

(3.) The next epochal legislation was the 26th Constitution Amendment Act of December 1971 which extinguished all royal privileges; privy purses and other dignitites of the erstwhile rulers of the Indian States. With the denotation of his royal privileges the Cochin Maharaja stepped down to the level of the karta of a joint Hindu family. The royalty which was once a reality became a mere memory and with the statutory injection of democratic rights into this blue-blooded family, plebeian claims for equal shares began to be voiced, especially because the multifid of little royalties of the Maharaja's matriarchal family lived in lurid poverty, as counsel distressingly described. Indeed, the marummakkattayam system which at one time ensured impartibility and management by the seniormost member had lost its functional value and virtually vanished from the Kerala coast, thanks to the erosive process of legislative individualism. The final blow to this system was delivered by the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975 (act 30 of 1976) which fully wiped out the materiarchal pattern of holding and the Hindu undivided family system in the State of Kerala. Despite this revolutionary change, the Cochin royal family maintained its former status as a marummakattayam undivided coparcenary since it was governed by special legislation which remained unrepealed. This regal matriarchal survival levelled into the mainstream of proprietary life with equal, partible shares for young and old, like the rest of the community when the Kerala legislature enacted the Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the Palace Fund (Partition) and the Kereala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Amendment Act, 1978 (Act 15 of 1978) (preceded by Ordinance No. 1 of 1978).