KUTTIALI Vs. DISTRICT COLLECTOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) What is impugned is Ext. P14 order of Government, passed under Clause.(14) of the Kerala Land Utilisation Order, 1967 upholding the Collector's decision to refuse permission to the petitioner to convert her 130-acre cardamom plantation into a coffee plantation. Under Clause.2(b) of the Land Utilisation Order cardamom and coffee are both food crops; and Clause.6(1) provides that where a land was being used for cultivating one kind of food crop continuously for three years before the commencement of the Order, its holder shall not use it for cultivation of another crop "except under and in accordance with the terms of a written permission given by the Collector". And the Explanation added to the sub clause clarifies that removal of tree growth, whether partial or total, on any land cultivated with cardamom shall be deemed to be an attempt to utilise the land for purposes other than cardamom cultivation. Clause (14) of the Order provides that the State Government shall have the power to call for the acts and proceedings of the Collector "in any case under this Order" and pass such orders thereon as they deem fit. The heading of the clause refers to this power as "revision".

(2.) The petitioner's case has a short history; but before attempting to briefly narrate the same, I should say that even though many reliefs are prayed for in the writ petition, the only one pressed before me at the hearing was for quashing Ext. P14. And the main ground urged was that the opinion of the Cardamom Board on which Government relied in Ext. P14 was obtained from a report given by the Board after an inspection of the estate by one of its, officers, without notice to the petitioner.

(3.) Ext. P1 is the petitioner's application for permission, filed before the Collector under clause.(6), and it makes mention of only two grounds: