GURDIAL SINGH, ETC Vs. PIARA SINGH, ETC

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Regular Second Appeals Nos. 182, 1095 and 1102 of 1963 are being disposed of together by this judgment as they involve a common question of law as to what effect the Punjab Custom (Power to Contest) Amendment Act, 1973 (Punjab Act No. 12 of 1973) hereinafter briefly referred to as 'the Amending Act' has on pending cases where a reversioner has challenged an alienation under the Punjab Customary Law on the usual grounds that the property alienated was ancestral qua him and that the alienation was without consideration and necessarily and shall not affect his reversionary rights after the lifetime of the alienor.

(2.) In R.S.A. No. 182 of 1963, the reversioners are the appellants as their suit has been dismissed by the Courts below on the findings, inter alia, that the property alienated was not proved to be ancestral qua the plaintiffs. In the other two appeals, sales of property have been successfully challenged by the son(s) of the vendor so that the vendees are the appellants in this Court. In one case, the plaintiff has been held liable to pay, when he sees possession of the land after his father's death, a part of the sale price, which was found to be for a valid necessity. These are, however, matters which do not in any way affect the question of law that has been argued before me at this stage.

(3.) By Section 4 of the Amending Act, an amending ordinance of the same name (Punjab Ordinance No. 2 of 1973) has been repealed. No specific provision has been made in the Amending Act for saving the pending proceedings. Sub-section (2) of Section 1 says that the Amending Act shall be deemed to have come into force on the 23rd day of January, 1973. It had received the assent of the Governor of Punjab on 6th April, 1973 and had been published in the Official Gazette (Extraordinary) dated 9th April, 1973. There is no indication as to how the Legislature hit upon the odd date mentioned in Section 1(2) but this date coincides with the coming into force of the repealed Ordinance. If the Legislature had selected the auspicious New Year's day of the year of grade 1973 A.D. or some other date having a rational nexus with the scheme of the Act or its objects and purposes, then there might have been some force in the argument advanced by the counsel for the reversioners that the Act was intended to have retrospective effect only up to that date ad no farther back in the past. The provisions and the title of the Principal and the Amending Acts may suggest that the original idea was to place some restrictions on the reversioner's power to contest such alienations under the Customary Law. Before the Principal Act was enacted in 1920, the remotest reversioners could challenge such alienations made by male or female proprietors under the Punjab Laws Act, 1872. Section 6 of the Principal Act restricted the powers of contesting such alienations made by male proprietors to Principal Act, however, said that the Act was not to affect any right to contest any alienation of appointment of a heir made before the date on which the Principal Act (Punjab Act II of 1920) came into force.