STATE OF HARYANA ETC v. SAMPURAN SINGH ETC

#1953) (for short, the Act). This legislation was enacted to bring abont an agrarian re-ordering so pivotal to the progress of our rural economy. Haryana, happily a granary of our country, is one of the States where land reform laws are likely to generate great changes by .banishing big concentration of Natur's bounty in a fell' feudal hands, creating an enthusiastic sense of distributive justice and exploiting the productive potential of land by the possessive passion of the landless many. So strategic is land reform that special constitutional concern has been shown for this programme. Naturally, the State enacted the Act whereby ceiling on land-ownership was set, surplus lands were taken over for settling ejected tenants and others and peasant proprie torship created. The scheme of the Act with which we are concerned is fairly simple and somewhat scientific,, although its language, what with frequent amendments dovetailed from time to time, has made for ambiguity, obscurity, marginal inconsistency and a rich crop of litigation. Indeed, the conflict of opinion at the High Court level and the bone of contention before us arise from this drafting deficiency. A B c Legal Preface : the optimum D A thumb-nail sketch of the Act is a prefatory necessity. The defines 'small land-owner' [S. 2(2)] having in mind ownership in the given conditions. 'Permissible area' [s. 2(3)] is a cognate concept limiting the maximum permissible extent a person may hold, and so long as he does not have any excess, he is a small land holder. He can evict the tenants from his holding and be in actual enjoyment as provided by the Act. If, however, he has lands beyond the permissible area, he becomes a large land-owner and has cough up the excess. However, he is given the option to choose the best area he desires to keep, called 'reserved area' [s. 2(4)] and then he must make available to the State such excess called surplus area fs. £(5-a)l. This creation of a surplus pool or reservoir is vital to the lands, success of the statutory project since, by llistribution of such rehabilitation of ejected tenants and to be accomplished. Maximisation of the surplus pool and suppression of evasion by large holders are of profound legislative concern. landless persons E F Even if a person is a small holder, it is quite on the cards that, by inheritance or other operation of law, or by voluntary transfer, he may acquire lands in excess of the permissible limit. The law takes care to see that sucn excess is also made available for re-settlement of ejectees and their ilk. In short, -the legislative mandate is that every agricultural holder in the State shall hold no more than the permissible G area and the surplus in the hands of large hoMers, whether acquired by voluntary transactions or involuntary operation of law, will go to feed the surplus pool. A semi-medieval set-up where considerable estates are cornered by a landed gentry, will naturally resist re-distributive reform measures and try ingElnious methodology to defeat the law. But the legislature H has to be astute enough to outwit such devious devices and subtle sub- 1erfuges. With this end in view, the Act has been amended to block all escape routes unearthed by the law-makers as often as the High • t • • • • • A B c D E F • G H HARYANA v. SAMPURAN .SINGH (Krishna Iyer, J.) 6 2 ~ Court has upheld certain patterns of alienations and oblique dealing:;. by interpretative process. A study of the history of the Act and the provocation for and frequency of amendments thereto, suggests an unspoken criticism about judicial approach which we will refer . to later. Suffice it to say that the law we are construing 1s a radical agrarian measure; its basic goals are to cut down large holdings and distribute lands to various landless people accor'ding to a design and to foster, according to legislative policy, an agrarian community of peasant proprietors. De-hoarding and defeating hide-outs are essen tial to make the twin objects successful and so ss. JOA and 19B among others, have been written into the Act. To explore the import and ambit of these two provisions, particularly the former, with a view to see whether it strikes at a gift made by the respondent in favour of his sons whereby he sought to stow away some of his lands, shed some of his excess lands and look slim on as a small holder before the law. Language permiting, the Court as interpretor, must fulfil, not frustrate, the legislative mission. Factual Silhouette At this stage it is appropriate to set out the facts in the two appeals which are not in dispute and speak for themselves. C.A. 123 of 1969 : that date (who was the owner One Sampuran Singh who owned 450 bighas and 9 biswas of land, acting with foresight, gifted half of it to his mother in 1951, perhaps with a premonition of coming restrictions by way of ceiling on owner ship. We need not speculate on that point in the light of subsequent happenings. The Act came into force on April 15, 1953 but even before the petitioner before the High Court under Art. 226 and respondent before us) executed a mortgage with possession over 12 bighas and 5 biswas. There was also some waste land included in his total holding which fell outside the scope of the Act. So much so, on the date when the Act came into force, he was the owner of about 178 bighas which, admit tedly, fell safely short of the permissible area of 30 standard acres [vide s. 2(3)]. Having thus dwarfed himself into a small land owner as defined in s. 2(2), the 'ceiling' provision held out no threat to hlm·. Certain small extents of land which were legally 'deductible from his total holding brought down the area in his possession to 138 odd bighas. Unfortunately for him, hls mother passed away in February 1958 and, he being the heir, all that he had gifted to her earlier came back to him as successor. The unhapoy consequence was that his holding expanded to 363 odd bighas, far in excess of the permissible area as set out in s. 2(3) of tho Act. Necessarily, this spill-over became surplus area as in s. 2(5-a) of the Act. Sensing the immi nent peril to hls property and manoeuvring to salvage it clutches of the legal ceiling. the petitioner executed a gift of 182 bi~has of land to his son by deed, dated February 11, 1959. He also executed three mortgages with possession. The cumulative resl, llt of these shedding ouerations was to shrink the size of his holding to well within the permissible area. The Collector, however, investigat- .630 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1976] 1 S.C.R. A .ed into the matter and declared an area of 117 bighas as surplus in his hands. He reached this co11clusion by ignoring the tell·tale gift of February 1, 1959 in favour of tl!e son and the tluee possessory mort gages executed in June 1958. The status of 'small land-owner' thus being forfeited, the tlueat to the surplus lands revive'd but was sought to be warded off by the petitioner moving an unsuccessful appeal to the Commissioner, and a further fruitless revision to the Financrn! .Commissioner. Eventually, he challenged the Collector's order in a Writ Petition which met with success. There was disagreement bet- ween the two learned Judges on the Bench and the third learned Judge read with decide\j in favour of the petitioner holding that s. 19B, s. lOA, did not affect the petitioner's transfers. The Judges, whose opinion upheld the claim of the petitioner, substantially con· curred in their reasonings but the scope of the interpretative exercise c is somewhat limited. We, therefore, propose straight to go into a study of the relevant provisions and may perhaps indicate our con clusion in advance. We wholly disagree with the High Court and .hold that to accept the construction which has appealed to the learned Judges is to frustrate the agrarian reform scheme of the Act and the .alternative reading gives life to the law, teeth to its provisions and fulfilment to its soul. D B In both the cases C.A. 2023 of 1972: The facts in this appeal are different but the .Point of Jaw involved is identical. the State of Haryana has come up to this Comt in appeal, the former b)". certificate under Art. 133(1)(c) and the latter by special leave granted by thi< Court. Anyway, in C.A. 2023 of 1972, respondent no. 1 owned 86 ,odd orllinary acres of land on April 15, 1953 when the Act came into force. After the commencement of the Act he inherited nearly 30 .ordinary acres and thus he held well above the permissible area and ceased to be a small land owner. Around the year 1957 he transferred 167 bighas of land to respondents nos. 3 to 6 pursuant to a Civii Court decree passed in 1957 in favour of his sons and wife. We ma•; :mention here, parenthetically but pathetically, that the weapons in the armoury of large lan1d owners to defeat the land reform law included securing simulactral decrees from civil courts against themselves i ,, favour of their close relations, thus using the judicial process to l!av .. their excess lands secreted in the names of their dear and near. This invited legislative attention and an amendment of the Act was made. viz., s. !OA whereby decrees and orders of courts were to be ignored in dealing with surplus lands. . Thus, the· Collector transfer of 167 bighas of land by rcspon'dent no.'! (~hich resulted iii civil court decrees of 1957 in favour of his sons and wife) declared 38.41 ordinary acres as surplus with respondent no. 1. The' statuton remedies did not see the first respondent (writ-petitioner) safe ashore and so he sought harbourage by moving the High Court under Art. 226 where he urged that the land inherited by him and later transfcrre,J to his sons and wife were not hit by s. JOA and s. 19B of the Act. He succeded in the Court in view of a certain strict constructim' ~dopted by the Court and .the State h~1s come up in appeal challeng ·mg the soundness of the High Court"s approach. ignoring E F G H /f I • t • HARYANA v. SAMPURAN SINGH (Krishna Iyer, !.) 631 A Szatutory Construction : , - B c • D The key-thought that pervades our approach is that if the consti tutionally cnvision.ed socio·cco110.mic revolution is not to be a paper tiger, agrarian laws have to be meaningfully enacted, interpreted and executetl and the court is not the anti-hero in the d_rama of limping land reform. Much to the same effect this Court observed in Amar Singh's Case(') : ''We have to bear in mind the activist, though inarti culate, major premise of statutory construction that the rule of law must run close to the rule of life and the court must read into an enactment,, language peniiitting, that meaning which promotes the benignant intent of the legislation preference to the one which perverts the scheme of statute on imputed legislative presumptions and assumed social values valid in a prior era. An a'Yare cow-t, formed of this adaptation in the rules of forensic interpreta tion. hesitates to nullify the plain object of a land reforms law unless compelled by its language, and the crux of this case is just that accent when double possibilities chemistry of construction crop up." while dealing with a somewhat c.nalogous set of provisions under the same Act The emphatic importance of augmenting the surplus pool for distribution by the State is brought out in Amar Singh (supra) thus : E • F 'The triple objects of the agrarian reform projected by the Act appear to be (a) to impart security of tenure ( b) to make the tiller the owner, and ( c) to trim large land hold ings, setting sober ceilings. To convert these political slo gans into legal realities, tc combat the evil of mass evictions, to create peasq_nt proprietorships and to ensure even distri bution of land ownerships a statutory sche.me was fashioned, the cornerstone of which was the building up of a reservoir of land carved out of the large landholdings and made available for utilisation by the State for re-settling ejected tenants." (p. 998) G Unfortunately, judicial decisions construing the language of the law have resulted in stultifying the objectives of the enactment leading to further amendments. We are concerned in the present case with ss. 1 OA and 19B which, in their final form, appeared by an amend·· m.ent of 1962 (Act XIV of 1962), but r~trospective effect was given wllh effect from the commencement of the Act, viz., April 1953. H In this context it is convenient to excerpt the observations of this Court in Amar Singh (supra) at p. 999 : · (I) A.J.R. 1974 S.C. 994, 996. 632 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1976] l S.C.R. "The objects and reas@s of Punjab Act 14 of 1962, which brought m certain significant restrictions on aliena tions and acquisitions of large land-holders ·starts off in the statement of objects thus : "Some of the recent judicial pronouncements have the effect of defeating the objectives with which the Punjab Security of, Land Tenures Act, 1953, was enacted and amended from time to time. It was intended that the sur plus area of every land-owner reco[ded as such in the revenue records should be made utilisable for the settle ment of ejected tenants." Certain specific decisions and their impact on the legis lative operation were mentioned, and then the statement of objects proceeded : "In order to evade the provisions o~ section 10-A of the Parent Act interested persons, being relations, have obtained decrees of courts for diminishing the surplus area. OauSe ( 4) o~ the Bill seeks to provide that such decrees should be ignored in computing the surplus area." The short point which confronts us in both these appeals is as to whether the gifts made by land-owners who exceeded their permissi ble area havtng come by additional lands by inheritance are to be ignored or taken into account when computing the surplus area in their hands, having regard to the specific provision in s. 19B living in fellowship with s. 10-A. It is appropriate to read ss. 1 OA and 19B here, before proceeding to the crucial discussion in the case : "10-A.-(a) The State Government or any officer em powered by it in this behalf shall be competent to utilize any surplus area for the resettlement of tenants ejected, or to be ejected, under clause (i) of sub-section (1) or section 9. (b) Notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force and save in the case of land acquired by the State Government under any law for the time being in force or by an heir by inheritance no transfer or other disposition of land which is comprised in surplus area at the commencement of this Act, shall affect the utilization thereof in clause (a). Explanation.-Such utilization of any surplus area will not affect the right of the landowner to receive rent from the tenant so settled. (c) For the purposes of determining the surplus area of any person under this section, anv judgment, decree or order ~ a court or other authority, obtained after the commence ment of this Act and having the effect of diminishing the area of such person which could have been declared as his sur plus area shall be ignored." A B c D E F G H ' A J ~ ;< I - • • .. A .. ... • B ·~ " I c o· E F l G H HARY,A,NA v. SAMPURAN SINGH (~rishna Iyer, iJ 633 ''19B. Future acquisition of land by inheritance, in excfss of per1nissible area.- (1) Subject to the provisions of s. lOA, if after the com mencement of this Act, any person, whether as land-owner or tenant, acquires by inheritance or by bequest or gift f!rom a person to· whom he is an heir any land, or if after the commencement of this Act and be(lore the 30th of July, 1958, any person acquires. by transfer, exchange, lease, agreement or settlement any land, or if, after such commencement, any person acquires in any other manner any land and which with or without the lands already owned or held by. him exceeds in the aggregate the permissible area, then he shall, within the period prescribed, furnish to the Collector, a re turn in the prescribed form and manner giving the parti culars ofl all lands and selecting the land not exceeding in the aggregate the permissible area which he desires to retain, and if the land of such person is situated in more than one patwar circle, he shall also furnish a declaration required by section 5-A. (2) If he fails to furnish the return aud select his land within the prescribed period, then the Collector may in res pect of him obtain the information required to be shown in the return through such agency as he may deem fit and select the land for him in the manner prescribed in sub 'ection (2) of section 5-B. (3) If such person ~ails to· furnish the declaration the provisions of section 5-C shall apply. ( 4) The excess land Otf such person shall be at the dis posal of the State Government for utilization as surplus area under clause (a) of section 10-A or for such other purposes ;;s the State Government may by notification direct." furnish Unclouded by case law, we first study s. 19B. Forgetting s. 10-A for a moment, we find that if, after the commencement of the Act, i.e. April 15 .. 1953, any person acquires any land by inheritance or bequest or giflt which, with the lands already held by him exceed in the aggregate the permissible area·, then he Collector a return indicating the permissible area he desires to retain. This he shall do within the prescribed period [S. 19B(l)]. If he defaults to make the return, the Collector will select the land for him ti 9B(2)]. He will suffer a penalty for failure to furnish the declara tion [19B(3)]. The excess land, i.e., the surplus area shall be at the disposal of Government for utilization under s. 10-A [19B(4)]. The surplus land will be used for re-settlement of tenants ejected or to be ejected under cl. (i) sub-s. (1) of s. 9 or other purpose notified by Government. The profound concern o,f the law to preserve the sur plus stock is manifiest from the obligation cast by sub-ss. (1) and (4) of 19-B to declare and deliver excess lands. How you came to hold the excess is not the question. Why you should be permitted to keep more than what others can lawfully own is the query. A might have Hl-925 Sup Cl/75 . ~ , 634 , SUPRE11E COURT REPORTS [1976] 1 s.C.R. acquired by paying hard cash; B might have received by gift and C by bequest and D by settlement and E by partition. The agrarian . policy is equitable ownership and the refomi philosophy is redistri butive justice, the rural goal being small peasant proprietorship; What difference does it make as to how you came by a large holding, from the standpoint above outlined? The thrust of s: 19-B is that even if the source of the excess area is inheritance, bequest ot gift, the capacity to own is conditioned by the permissible limit. Section 10-A does not militate against this mandate of s. 19-B. Jrideed, s. 19-)3 had to be enacted because the High Court took the· view that area which became surplus subsequent to April 15, 1953 was not hit by the ceiling set and land acquired by an heir by inheri-. tance is saved from utilisation by the State. Section: 10-A(a) is wide in its terms and encoaipasses all surplus area, howsoever obtained. Even s. 10-A(b) strikes no discordant note. All that it says and means is that .lands acquired by an heir by inheritance. are saved in· so far as di•positions of such lands arc concerned. The drafting cf the saving clause is cumbersome but the sense is ·and, having regrrrd . to the conspectus, can only be that although in the hands of the pro positus, it is surplus land, if -among the heirs it transfers will not be affected by the interdict of s. 10-A(a) The sins 0£ the father shall not set the teeth of the . children on edge. If the heirs are otherwise small holders, the fact that their father wa~ a large owner will not deprive the former 0£ their heritage, if it is Jess than the permissible area. We see no conflict between s. 10-A and 19-B. Assuming some inconsistency, primacy goes· to. s. 19-B which effec tuates the primary object. It is settled law that Courts should favct:I' an interpretation that promotes· the general. purpose of an Act rather than· one that does not. is not, · . Counsel for the respondents adopted the arguments which found favour. with the High Court and pressed two points. .Tue scheme of the Act, according to the learned Judges, was to see that no ·one held in qcess of the permissible area and since by the gift to the son or wife the latter had only lands within permissible limits, there was no frustration of the policy of the law This reasoning is repugnant to the basic scheme because the surplus pool will be adversely affected if gifts and other transfers which will skim off surplus were- to be Indeed, the flaw in the High Court's argument is that if it allowed. were allowed to prevail; there will be no surplus land at all, every large holder being free to screen his surplus in the names of his kith and kiri or servants or reliable friends, by going through alienatory exercises. A legislation which has provided ignoring decrees diminishing surplus lands and has otherwise prevented tlie escape cf excess area by voluntary transfers, cannot conceivably be intended· to permit inherited excesses. A - l •• c D E F G The second argument which appealed to the High Court is a little curious, and somewhat difficult to follow. Section 19-B directs H the owner who, by inheritance, comes to own an excess area, to make a declaration of his lands within a prescribed time. This does not mean that the time lag is statutorily given for executing gifts and HARYANA V, ~AMPURAN SINGH (Krishna Iyer, J.) 635 A B c D transfers to defeat the law itself. Such a conclusion would be obviously absurd. What is intended is to give some time to the heir the choice of his to ascertain the assets he has inherited, make 'reserved area' which he likes to keep and make the necessary decla ration. A processual facility cannot be converted into an opportunity to pervert and to thwart the substantive object o~ the law. After all, courts, faced with special case situations, have 'creatively' to inter pret legislatfon. The courts are 'finishers, refiners and polishers of legislation which comes to them in a state requiring varying degrees of further· processing', said Th:maldson J., in Corocraft Ltd. v. Pan American Airways Inc.(<1) and indeed it is no secret that courts cons tantly give their own shape to enactments. We feel that when economic.legislation in the implementation of Part IV of the Constitution strikes new ground and takes liberties with old jurisprudence, there looms an interpretation problem of some .dimensions which Indian jurists will have to tackle. The genre of agrarian reform laws, with special constitutional status, as it were, warrants interpretative skills which will stifle evasive attempts, specially by way Df gifts and bequests and suspect transfers. Here ss. 10-A, 19-A and 19-B, inter alia, strike at these tactics. Our concl\Jsion, in conformity with the principles of statutory ronstruction we have projected, is that the gifts in both the appeals fail in the face of s. 19-B. to be allowed, which we hereby do without hesitation, without casts how ever to either party at any stage. It follows that the appeals have P.H.P. Appeals allowed. ' • •• - • (I) [1968] 3 W.L.R. 714, 732.