LAXMINARAYAN TEMPLE KOTHURE Vs. LAXMAN MAHADU CHANDORE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE four petitions have given rise to common questions relating to the interpretation of the proviso to Sub-section (1) of Section 88b of the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 and the constitutional validity of the said proviso and of Sections 32 to 32r of the said Act in so far as these provisions affect agricultural lands belonging to religious denominations. In order to appreciate the questions raised and the arguments advanced on either side, it would be enough to notice the facts involved in one of these petitions.

(2.) IN Special Civil Application No. 1129 of 1964 the petitioners are the trustees of a public trust whose object is to maintain a Hindu temple and to continue the worship of the deity installed therein. The trust was created as early as in 1845. The trust owned an agricultural land in a village in the Nasik District. The first respondent was the tenant of the land from before 1957. The Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 (hereinafter referred to as "the Bombay Tenancy Act") which applied to this land was extensively amended by Bombay Act XIII of 1956. The amending Act added Sections 32 to 32r to the parent Act with the object of transferring the ownership of agricultural lands-from landlords to tenants. Subject to certain exceptions with which we are not concerned, tenants became owners of the lands in their possession from the tillers' day, which was the 1st of April 1957. By the same amending Act Section 88b was also added to the parent Act. Clause (b) of Sub-section (1) of Section 88b, along with the proviso to that Sub-section, is in the following terms:

(3.) IN support of the petition two submissions were made by Mr. Guttal who appeared on behalf of the petitioners. Mr. Guttal argued, in the first place, that the aforesaid proviso to Sub-section (1) of Section 88b, according to its correct interpretation, does not require that the trust in question should have been registered either on the 1st of August 1956 when Section 88b came into force or on the day on which the tenant of the land was to become the owner thereof and that the requirement of the proviso is fulfilled if the trust was, or was deemed to be, registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act at any time before the application for exemption was filed. If this argument is not accepted. Mr. Guttal submitted in the alternative that Sections 32 to 32r of the Bombay Tenancy Act, in so far as they apply to agricultural lands belonging to public religious trusts, are invalid as they violate the fundamental right guaranteed by Article 26 (c) of the Constitution.