KOCHUNNI KARTHA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The constitutionality of the Kanam Tenancy Act, No. XXIV of 1955, hereinafter referred to as the Act, has been challenged in these ten writ petitions. Three landlords or jenmies are the petitioners in O.P. Nos. 339/56, 106/57 and 208/58, and claim part of the Act to be violative of their fundamental rights under Art.14, 19 (l)(f) and 31. The remaining seven petitions are by the holders of kanam tenures, who dispute the Cochin Devaswom Boards right to auction their properties due to their failure to pay rent in kind, whose money value had yet to be determined in exercise of the powers under the Act. The Devaswom Board, in the replies, not only adopt the plea of the Act not being constitutional due to the landlords fundamental rights having been infringed; but further claim the Act not having repealed the earlier enactments, under which holders of kanam tenures in the Devaswom lands, were subject to special powers, that authorised auctioning of the tenants properties on the failure to pay the rent. Therefore, the two questions arising for decisions in the ten petitions, are how far the Act is constitutional and, assuming it to be such, whether the Act governs all kanam tenures in Cochin area including those of Devaswom lands.

(2.) It is common ground that the customary laws pertaining to land tenures, including kanom, throughout the Malabar area, were subject to small local variations. Yet, the legislations dealing with such tenures in the several parts of what now is the Kerala State, at no time been either identical or equally progressive. The jenmi, according to the Cochin State Manual (Published in 1911), acknowledged by kanom lease liability to pay a lump sum to the tenant on the redemption of lease, & the liability was, in most cases, created as reward to the tenants military or other services; but in more recent times, by the jenmi borrowing money from the tenant to meet any extraordinary expenditure. According to the aforesaid Manual, the net produce in such lease would, after deducting the cost of seed and cultivation, be shared by the landlord and the tenant; and, from the share of the former, the latter would be entitled to deduct interest at 6 per cent on the kanom amount, the surplus payable to the jenmi, after making the deductions, being known as michavaram. The kanomdar would be entitled to the undisputed enjoyment of the land for 12 years; and, at the end of the period, the jenmi may terminate the lease by paying the kanom amount and the value of improvements effected by the tenant, or may renew on the kanomdar paying the jenmi a premium or renewal fee. The rate of the renewal fee at one time was 10 per cent of the kanom amount with an additional 3 percent on account of certain incidental payments; but in the Cochin area, by 1911, had risen to 25 to 34 per cent. The Manual also says that though the lease would be redeemable at the end of its period at the jenmis pleasure, yet, according to custom, the Kanom tenants would never be evicted except for fraudulent conduct derogating from the jenmis title, for wilful and extensive waste of the land in possession, for persistent default in payment of the rent and other dues, and for refusal to accept renewal of lease by paying the customary fees.

(3.) So far as the Cochin area is concerned, the first statutory definition of the kanom tenure and the attendant control, are to be found in the Cochin Tenancy Act, No. 11 of 1090. That was passed on October 24, 1914 and kanam tenant was defined by its