NAMDHARI GURUDWARA Vs. NAKBINOO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The only question raised in this appeal relates to the vires of section 11 of the Himachal Pradesh Abolition of Big Landed Estates and Land Reforms Act, 1953 and the challenge is centred round Article 26 of the Constitution. Section 11 reads as under :-

(2.) The respondents' learned counsel has in reply placed reliance on a Full Bench decision of the Allahabad High Court in Raja Swyapal Singh v. The UP. Government at p. 690 of the report, it has been observed as follows:- "Arguments have been advanced by the learned counsel on behalf of certain waqfs and Hindu religious institutions, based on Arts. 25(1) and 26, Cl. (c) of the Constitution. Art. 25(1) provides that :- 'Subject to public order morality and health and to the other provisions of this part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to process, practice and propogate religion.' It is said that a muatwalli's right to profess his religion is infringed if the waqf property is compulsorily acquired, but the acquisition of that property under Art. 31 ( to which the right conferred by Art. 25 is expressly subject ) has nothing to do with such rights and in no way interferes with this exercise.

(3.) Artic. 26, Cl. (c) provides that Subect to public order, morality and health, every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right to own and acquire movable and immovable property and the argument is that as such institutions have been thereby guaranteed the right to own property, any acquisition of their property is a contravention of the provisions of the Art. Art. 19(1) (f) is distinguished from Art. 26, Cl. (c) on the ground that ownership of property is guaranteed under the latter but not under the former. This argument we think to be wholly fallacious. Art. 26, Cl. (c), confers on every religious denomination the right to own and acquire property but it does no more than this, and we can see no ground for holding that it prevents, or was intended to prevent property belonging to a religious body being acquired by authority of law. The second decision cited on behalf of the respondents is Chintamoni Prathilri v. The State of Orissa, in which acquisition of Devadayam inam under section 3 of the Orissa Estates Abolition Act was held not to interfere with the fundamental rights guaranteed under Article 26, Lastly, my attention has been invited to the State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh, In that decision, the State Legislature's power to acquire trust properties was upheld and it was added that a charity created by a private individual is not immune from the sovereign's power to compulsorily acquire that property for public purposes. Mahajan, J. (as he then was) continued to observe that it wa.s incorrect to say that the vesting of these properties in the State under the provisions of the U. P. Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act in any way affected the charity adversely because the net income that the institutions were deriving from the properties had been made the basis of compensation awarded to them.