KARUMAN Vs. SUBRAMANIAN PATTAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE suits are by tenants under S. 53 of the Malabar tenancy Act. They have executed deeds of surrender of their tenancy rights in favour of the landlord in 1951. S. 53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act provides: "any document executed by a Cultivating Verumpattomdar after the 28th July 1950 and before the commencement of the Malabar Tenancy (Amendment) Act, 1954, purporting to affect his rights or status as tenant shall be voidable at the option of the cultivating Verumpattomdar". The plaintiffs have issued notices as required in the section before the prescribed date, and have instituted these suits in time as provided in the said section. ,

(2.) THE landlords contended, inter alia, that S. 53 of the malabar Tenancy Act offended the fundamental rights guaranteed to them by the constitution and is as such unconstitutional and void. On their motion the suits have been withdrawn to this court under Art. 228 of the Constitution for the determination of that question. THE learned counsel for the defendants-landlords challenged the validity of the said section as violative of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Art. 14,19 and 31 of the constitution. According to the learned counsel S. 53 is discriminate in that oral surrenders of tenant's rights irrespective of date, and surrenders of tenant's rights before the 28th July 1950 and after the 20th March 1954 are not affected by it and this would be a discrimination which is not based on any reasonable classification. He would further contend that the tenant having surrendered all his rights to the landlord under a transaction which was legal and valid according to the law as it then stood, the tenancy had terminated and absolute rights in the property had become vested in the landlord. To nullify the same by a subsequent legislation with retrospective effect would offend the rights guaranteed to the landlord under Art. 19 [1] [f] of the Constitution. A further ground of objection was that this provision for cancellation of the surrender and restoration of the property to the tenant tantamounts to a deprivation of the proprietory rights vested in the landlord for which no compensation is provided for in the act and as such it offends Art. 31 of the Constitution also. THE learned advocates who appeared for the plaintiffs as also the learned Government pleader who was called to appear in the case under Order XXVII-A of the Civil procedure Code oppose an enquiry into the merits of these contentions as they are expressly barred by Art. 31a of the Constitution. THEy urge that the impugned piece of legislation, being one intended for the extinguishment or modification of rights in estates by way of agrarian reform, is within the protection of Art. 31a of the Constitution.

(3.) AGAIN in Atma Ram v. State of Punjab, (AIR. 1959 S. C. 519): "keeping in view the fact that Art. 31a was enacted by two successive amendments - one in 1951 [first Amendment], and the second in 1955 [fourth Amendment] - with retrospective effect, in order to save legislation effecting agrarian reforms, we have every reason to hold that those expressions have been used in their widest amplitude, consistent with the purpose behind those amendments. A piece of validating enactment purposely introduced into the Constitution with a view to saving that kind of legislation from attacks on the ground of constitutional invalidity, based on Art. 14,19 and 31, should not be construed in a narrow sense. On the other hand, such a constitutional enactment should be given its fullest and widest effect, consistently with the purpose behind the enactment, provided, however, that such a construction does not involve any violence to the language actually used. " The provisions of S. 53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act, being provisions intended to secure and improve the economical status or welfare of the tenants of lands, are provisions of agrarian reform; and they do come within the purview of clause [1] (a) of Art. 31-A of the Constitution which prohibits their impeachment under Art. 14,19 or 31 of the Constitution.