FR K AARON Vs. TALUK LAND BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner in the Civil Revision Petition and the Original Petition is the same. He is the Prior of St. Antony's Monastery, Alwaye. The challenge in the writ petition is against the validity of S.85(9) of the Kerala Land Reforms Act (for short, the Act) which confers wide powers on the Taluk Land Boards to reopen cases already decided and to quash Ext. P4 order of the Taluk Land Board. This challenge is now purely academic since a Division Bench of this Court, to which I was a party, has upheld the validity of this Section. Ext. P4, for this reason is valid and cannot be called in question on the ground.

(2.) The Civil Revision Petition is directed against the order of the Taluk Land Board, Alwaye, by which the petitioner was directed to surrender 22.46.395 acres of land, while the earlier order had exempted his Monastery from the provisions of the Act. This was done under S.85(9) of the Act

(3.) The petitioner's case is that the Monastery that he represents is a religious charitable institution of a public nature and as such is exempted from the ceiling provisions under S.81 of the Act. After the case was reopened, the Taluk Land Board wanted to look into the accounts of the Monastery to find out whether the petitioner satisfied the proviso to S.81(1)(t) which read as "provided that the entire income of such lands is appropriated for the University, institution or trust concerned". The petitioner did not comply with the request and did not supply the necessary materials, but contended that the notice was bad since the Monastery was protected by S.98 A of the Act.