SHIBU Vs. CHALAKUDY MUNICIPALITY, CHALAKKUDY, THRISSUR & OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) God's own country is also man's paradise, with teeming millions trying to have a foothold, better expressed, a secure roof over their heads. With the density of population at three times the national average, here man is, insidiously, perhaps out of compulsion, waging a turf war with the nature the trees and water, especially. The inelastic land resource fast getting exhausted for nonagricultural purposes, the State stares at the prospect of rendering itself a consuming society, rather than a producing one. Then step in the Government and the Legislature with measures to protect the nature's province: Kerala Land Utilisation Order, 1967 and the Kerala Conservation of Paddy and Wetland Act, 2008 have been brought on to the statute books.

(2.) To gauge the pressure of people on nature's habitat can be quoted this excerpt from a news report (the Hindu, May 18, 2013), which is based on the latest census. The density of population in Kerala has gone up to 860 persons per square kilometre from a figure of 819 in 2001. The highest density of 1,508 persons per sq. km is reported from Thiruvananthapuram district, while Idukki with 255 has the lowest density. Malappuram with a population of 41,12,920, is the most populated district in the State, while Wayanad with 8,17,420 is the least populated. The total number of households in Kerala as per the census is 78,53,754, with the average household size put at 4.3. In 2001, the household size was 4.7; Malappuram district with 5.2 as average household size is at the top, while Pathanamthitta district with 3.7 has the lowest household size.

(3.) This batch of writ petitions throws up the issue of inter-play between a secondary legislation the Kerala Land Utilisation Order and a primary legislation the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008. Put differently, whether both the enactments, notwithstanding the disparity in the source of their origins, stand simultaneously to hold their respective fields or the latter subsumes the former from the day of its enactment or enforcement In other words, whether these two pieces of legislation conflate or conflict in resolving the issue of conversion of compendiously expressed agricultural lands into non-agricultural lands.