HASMUKHALAL DAHA YABHAI ETC. ETC & Ors. v. STATE OF GUJARAT

·Spouses and minor children, as natural persons, have not been debarred from holding their separate rights to land by the provisions It is not the object of the Act to do that. The object of of the Act. the Act, as set out above, is two fold : firstly, to limit the ceiling area of each holder; and, secondly, to acquire what falls beyond the ceilin11; limit so that the State may distribute it to more needy persons. It is not disputed that compensation is provided for acquisition of what exceeds the ceiling area. in every case. As was held by this Court in H.H. Kesavananda Bharati Sripadagalavaru v. State of Kerala,(1) the amount of compensation fixed cannnot be questioned. Therefore, no ·----- (!) [1973] Supp. s.c.R. 1. A B c D E F G H A B c D E F G H 10 8 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1977) 1 S.C.R. provision of the Act could be or is challenged on the ground that the required compensation is not prescribed for an acquisition under it a i required by Article 31 (2) of the Constitution or is inadequate.' Arti cle 31B of the Constitution seems to us to provide a complete answer to any attack directed against the provisions of an Act based upon an alleged violation of any of the rights conferred by the provisions of It reads : Part III of the Constitution. "3 lB. Without prejudice to the generality of the provi sions contained in Article 31B, none of the Acts and Regula tions specified in the Ninth Schedule nor any of the provi sions thereof shall be deemed to be void, or ever to have be come void, on the ground that such Act, Regulation or provi sion is inconsistent with, or takes away or abridses any of the rights conferred by, and provisions of this part, and not withstanding any judgment, decree or order of any court or tribunal to the contrary, each of the said Acts and Regula tions shall, subject to the power of any competent Legisla ture to repeal or amend it, continue in force". Learned Counsel for the petitioners concede that, in view of the decision of this Court in H.H: Kesavananda Bharti's case (supra) and other cases referred to there, it is not possible to assail the provisions of Section 6 of the Act on the ground that they take away or abridge arty right conferred by Part III of the Constitution on individuals. But, what they urge is that the second proviso to Article 31A(l) does not confer any right upon any person but only imposes a limit upon the Legislative competence to that the inclusion of the Act in the 9th Schedule will not validate a provision which a legislature was not competent it all to enact. Such a provision, it was submitted, will not be protected by Article 3 lB of the Constitution. The contention i-s that Article 3 lB does not protect a provision from invalidity on the ground of legislative incompe'.ence of the leg"slature enacting it. We do not think that the case before us raises any question of legislative competence of the nature which could arise if a State Legis lature had tried to trespass upon the exclusive domain of Union Legis lation. What has been urged is simply that the second proviso to Arti cle 31 ( l) disabks the Stale Legslature from acquiring any land below the ceiling limit without prov:ding for compensation for such acqui sition at the full market value. The proviso certainly protects, and, indeed, confers certain rights upon individuals to an amount of com pensation. That is its direct effect. The argument on behalf of the appellant, as we understand it is "person" that, although, an alteration of the ceiling limit for each <lirec; tly by prescribing its stautory limit is permissible, yet, if it is not done directly by changing the ceiling limit for each person but by introducing a concept of "person'', contrary to the concept in the pro visions of the s~cond provis_o to Article 3lA(1), it becomes a prohibited colourable device for gettmg round the second proviso to Article 31A(l). It is urged that the effect of the amended Section 6 of the HASMUKHALAL V. GUJARAT (Beg, J.) 109 Act is to change the ceiling limit for some persons only by altering the legal and constitutional concept of a person, A - We do not find any fixed concept of "person" anywhere. No is wide so that it could be contended that doubt the concept should not be narrowed down or confined. But does Section 6 (2) do that? Section 6 (2) does not either disable a husband or wife from owning or holding their separate properties separately. It does not merge or destroy their separate legal perso nalities. It requires their separate holdings to be grouped togetner as though they were. held by one person only for the purpose of deter mining the ceiling limit for each member of a family. [t may indirectly have the effect of disabling a member of a family from holding land upto the prescribed ceiling limit for a person holding as an indiv:dual. In other words, the result is that such a member of a family will have to be content with a holding less than that of an unmarried individual. It has the effect of making it clear that what have to be grouped to gether are the separate properties of individuals belonging to families other than what are "joint families", in law. It takes in and applies to members of families other than undivided Hindu families. It means that married persons and their minor children will ha-ve to be viewed as though they hold one lot together even though they retain their se parate legal personalities and remain competent owners of their se It does not affect either their legal status or com parate holdings. petence. It does reduce their individual holdings. But, we do not find any prohibition enacted by the second proviso to Article· 3IA(1) against different ceiling limits prescribed for various individuals or classes of individuals differently situated. Nor does the second proviso to Article 31A(l) prescribe any particular or direct mo9e of imposing different ceilings on individuals differently circumstanced. A glance at the provisions of Section 20 of the Act shows that >:e _parate rights to properties grouped together for purposes of computation onl;y do not vanish. On the other hand, each holder of such separate rights above the ceiling ·limit is permitted to select the property he or she wishes to continue to hold in such a way "that the >lands selected for such continuance shall be in the same proportion in which lands were held by each spouse before furnishing the relevant statement under sub-section ( 1) of Section 1 O". The reduction in their holdings would, therefore, .be proport:onate to the areas of lands held separately but brought together only for the purposes of determining the ceiling limit for the family. The whole object of the process prescribed seems to be that families, as contemplated by the Act, should be units for merely determination of ceilings for each member of a family. Appellants relied on Kunjukutty Sahib etc. etc. v. State of Kerala & A nr. (1) where it was held by this Court (at p. 314) : "It was not disputed that the ceiling limit fixed by the amended Act was within the competence of the legislature to fix; nor was i_t contended that the ceiling fixed by the original unamended Act by itself debarred the legislature from further - - - - - - - - - - (!) [1973] I S.C.R. 326@ 341- B c D E F G H 110 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1977] 1 S.C.R. reducing the ceiling limit. so fixed. Prior to the amendment undoubtedly no land . within the personal cultivation ot the holder under the unamended Act within the ceiling limit fixed thereby could be acquired without payment of compensation according to the market value, but once ceiling limit was changed by the amended Act the second Proviso to Art. 31A ( 1) must be held to refer only to the new ceiling limit fixed by the amended Act. The ceiling limit originally li.xed ceased to exist for future the moment it was replaced by the amen ded Act. The prohibition contained in the second proviso operates only within the ceiling limit fixed under the existing law, at the given time. It is true that the new ceiling limit was fixed contemporaneously .with the acquisition of the land in excess of that ceiling limit. But it was not contended that a law so fixing the ceiling limit and acquiring the land in excess would offend any provision of the Constitution''. Pritam Singh v. State of Punjab & Ors.(1) was also cited on behalf of the appellants. Here the contention, amongst others, was repelled that, by adding land transferred to certain relations to that held by a person under his personal cultivation, for the purpose of determining his ceiling area and the surplus left, under the provisions of the Pepsu Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1955, as amended by a subsequent Act, rights guaranteed by the second proviso to Article 31 A ( 1 ) were contravened. This case certainly does not lay down that the ceiling li.mit applicable to each individual must be uniform or that it mmt be con tained in a single statutory provision directly dealing with ceiling limits. It follows that the ceiling limit may vary from individual to individual. These varying limits may result from the combined effect of several provisions. The prescription of different ceiling limits for different individuals, differently circumstanced, could be enacted directly by a single provision dealing with individual ceiling limits, or, alterna tively, it could be the consequence of several provisions dealing with differing sets of circumstances. No law known to us has ever laid down that the intention of the law makers on a particular subject must necessarily transpire from a single statutory provision or statutory pro visions dealing directly with a particular aspect. To read any such limit into the 2nd proviso to Article 31A(l) of the Constitution would be to accept a novel restriction on legislative competence. We have no doubt that no such restriction could be found in the 2nd proviso to Article 31A(l) of the Constitution. · It was urged that Article 31A(l) and 31B of the Constitution operate in different fields of legislation. Whereas Article 31A(1) cures certain possible invalidities in ordinary legislation, arising from its inconsistencies with Articles 14 or 19 or 31 of the Constitution, Article 3 lB cures a wider range of infirmities arising from conflict with any of the provisions of Part III of the Constitution and necessitates a consti tutional amendment so as to protect an impugned legislation by its in clusion in the 9th ~chedule to the Constitution. Legislation protected (1) [1967] 2 S.C.R. p. 536. B c D E F G H - HASMUKHALAL V. GUJARAT (Beg, J.) 111 by Article 3 lA of the Constitution would fall under appropriate legisla- A tive entries in the 7th Schedule. But, to secure the protection of Arti- cle 3 lB of the Constitution, resort to the provisions of Article 3 68 of the Constitution is imperative. These differences do not mean that legislation falling under any part of Article 31A(l) of the Constitution, including the provisos, cannot receive also the protection contemplated by Article 31B of the Constitution .. Thereis nothing in our Constitu- tion to bar any statute from receiving a dual protection, so to speak, B -0f both Article 31 A (1) and 3 lB of the Constitution if the conditions .of each are satisfied. It is clear to us that the proviso to Article 31A(l) of the Consti tution confers certain rights upon individuals and protects them from constitutionally illegal invasion. We ate, . therefore, unable to accept the argument advanced on behalf of the appellants that the "protective C umbrella" of Article 3 lB does not shield the impugned provisions against an attack based upon the limits imposed by the second proviso to Article 31A(l) on legislative power. The argument overlooks cer- tain obvious answers : firstly, that limits on legislative powers, imposed by Part· III of the Constitution, do have the direct result of protecting individual rights; and, secondly, that no part of the second proviso to Article 31 (1) of the. Constitution was, as already pointed out above, D infringed by the impugned provisions; and, thirdly, even if one were to assume, for the sake of argument, that rights conferred on individuals by the 2nd proviso to Article 31 ( 1), were infringed in any way, pro visions of Article 31B of the Constitution are enough to repel an at- tack based upon such an alleged infringement. Both Atricles 31A(l) and 3 lB are intended to operate as protections against consequences -0f. what could otherwise be breaches of the Constitution. E Consequently, we have to and do dismiss these appeals. But; in the circumstances of the case, the parties will bear their own costs. P.H.P. Appeals dismissed.