PATANJALT SASTRI C. - (1.) THESE appeals and petitions which fall into three groups, raise the issue of the constitutional validity of three State enactments called The Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950 (Bihar Act 30 of 1950) The Madhya Pradesh Abolition of Proprietary Rights (Estates Mahals, Alienated Lands) Act, 1950 (No. 1 of 1951), and The Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1930 (U P. Act No. 1 of 1951), (hereinafter referred to as the Bihar Act the Madhya Pradesh Act and the Uttar Pradesh Act, respectively). The common aim of these statutes, generally speaking, is to abolish zamindaries and other proprietary estates and tenures in the three States aforesaid, so as to eliminate the intermediaries by means of compulsory acquisition of their rights and interests, and to bring the raiyats and other occupants of lands in those areas into direct relation with the government. The constitutionality of these Acts having been challenged in the respective State High courts on various grounds, the Bihar Act was declared unconstitutional and void on the ground that it contravened Art. 14 of the Constitution, the other grounds of attack being rejected, while the other two Acts were adjudged constitutional and valid. The appeals are directed against these decisions. Petitions have also been filed in this court under Art. 32 by certain other zemindars seeking determination of the same issues. The common question which arises for consideration in all these appeals and petitions is whether the three State Legislatures, which respectively passed the three impugned statutes, were constitutionally competent to enact them, though some special points are also involved in a few of there cases. (1a) As has been stated, various grounds of attack were put forward in the courts below, and, all of them having been repeated in the memoranda of appeals and the petitions, they would have required consideration but for the amendment of the Constitution by the Constitution (First Amendment). Act, 1951 (hereinafter referred to as the Amendment Act) which was passed by the Provisional Parliament during the pendency of these proceedings. That Act by inserting the new Arts. 31-A and 31-B purported to protect, generally, all laws providing for the acquisition of estates or interests therein, and specifically certain statutes, including the three impugned Acts, from attacks based on Art. 13 read with other relevant articles of Part III of the Constitution. And the operation of these articles was made retrospective by providing, in S. 4 of the Amendment Act, that Art. 31-A shall be "deemed always to have been inserted" and in Art. 31-B, that none of the specified statutes "shall be deemed ever to have become void". The validity of the Amendment Act was in turn challenged in proceedings instituted in this court under Art. 32 but was upheld in 'SHANKARI PRASAD SINGH DEO V. UNION OF INDIA'. 1952) SCR 89. The result is that the impugned Acts can no longer be attacked on the ground of alleged infringement of any or the rights conferred by the provisions of Part III.
(2.) IT will be noted, however,, that Arts. 31-A and 31-B afford only limited protection against one ground of challenge, namely, that the law in question 15 "Inconsistent with or takes away or abridges any of the rights conferred by any provisions of this Part". This is made further clear by the opening words of Art. 31-A "notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this Part". The Amendment Act thus provides no immunity from attacks based on the lack of legislative competence under Art. 246, read with the entries in list2 or list3 of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution to enact the three impugned statutes, as the Amendment Act did not in any way affect the Lists. Mr. P. R. Das, leading counsel for the zemindars, accordingly based his main argument in these proceedings on entry No. 36 of list2 and entry No. 42 of lists which read as follows: "36. Acquisition or requisitioning of property, except for the purposes of the Union, subject to the provisions of entry42 of list3. 42. Principles on which compensation for property acquired or requisitioned for the purposes of the Union or of a State or for any other public purpose is to be determined, and the form and the manner in which such compensation is to be given." The argument may be summarised thus. entry No. 36 of list2 read With Art. 246(3) was obviously intended to authorise a State Legislature to exercise the right of eminent domain, that is, the right of compulsory acquisition of private property. The exercise of such power has been recognised in the jurisprudence of all civilised countries as conditioned by public necessity and payment of compensation. All legislation in this country authorising such acquisition of property from Regulation 1 of 1824 of the Bengal Code down to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, proceeded on that footing. The existence of a public purpose and an obligation to pay compensation being thus the necessary concomitants of compulsory acquisition of private property, the term "acquisition" must be construed as importing, by necessary implication the two conditions aforesaid. It is a recognised rule for the construction of statutes that, unless the words of the statute clearly so demand, a statute is not to be construed so as to take away the property of a subject without compensation - 'ATTORNEY-GENERAL v. DE KEYSER'S ROYAL HOTEL', 1920) AC 508 at p. 542. The power to take compulsorily raises by implication a right to payment - 'CENTRAL CONTROL BOARD v. CANNON BREWERY', 1919) AC 744. The words "subject to the provisions of entry42 of list3" in entry36 reinforce the argument, as these words must be taken to mean that the power to make a law with respect to acquisition of property should be exercised subject to the condition that such law should also provide for the matters referred to in entry42, in other words, a two-fold restriction an to public purpose and payment of compensation (both of which are referred to in entry42, to imposed on the exercise of the law-making power under entry36. In any case, the legislative power conferred under entry42 is a power coupled with a duty to exercise it for the benefit of the owners whose properties are compulsorily acquired under a low made under entry36. For all these reasons the State Legislatures, it was claimed, had no power to make a law for acquisition of property without fulfilling the two conditions as to public purpose and payment of compensation. On the basis of these arguments counsel proceeded to examine elaborately various provisions of the impugned Acts with a view to show that the compensation which they purport to provide has by "various shifts and contrivances", been reduced to an illusory figure as compared with the market value of the properties acquired, The principles laid down for the computation of compensation operated in reality as "principles of confiscation", and the enactment of the statutes was in truth a "fraud on the Constitution", each of them being colourable legislative expedient for taking private properties without payment of compensation in violation of the Constitution, while pretending to comply with its requirements. Nor were these statutes enacted for any public purpose; their Only purpose and effect was to destroy the class of zamindars and tenure-holders and make the government a "super-landlord". While such an aim might commend itself as a proper policy to be pursued by the political party in power. It could not, in law, be regarded as a public purpose Mr. Somayya, who appeared for some of the zamindars in the Madhya Pradesh group of cases, while adopting the arguments of Mr. Das, put forward an additional ground of objection. He argued that the impugned. Acts were not passed in accordance with the procedure prescribed in Art. 31(3) which provides "No such law as is referred to in CL (2) made by the Legislature of a State shall have effect unless such law, having been reserved for the consideration of the President, has received his assent." Learned counsel stressed the words "law" and "legislature" and submitted that. Inasmuch as the legislature of a State included the governor (Art. 168) and a bill could become a law only after the governor assented to it under Art. 200, Cl.(3) of Art. 31 must be taken to require that a State law authorising compulsory acquisition of property should receive the governor's as well as the President's assent, the former to make it a law and the latter to give it "effect". As the relative bills were reserved in each case by the governor concerned alter they were passed by the House or Houses of Legislature, as the case may be, without giving his assent under Art. 200, the statutes did not satisfy the requirements of Art. 31(3) and so could not have "effect". This ground of attack. It was claimed, was not excluded by Art. 31-A or Art. 31-B as it was not based on infringement of fundamental rights.
(3.) DR. Ambedkar, who appeared for some of the zamindars in the Uttar Pradesh batch of cases, advanced a different line of argument. He placed no reliance upon entry38 of list2 or entry43 of list3. He appeared to concede what Mr. Das so strenuously contested, that those entries, concerned as they were with the grant of power to the State Legislature to legislate with respect to matters specified therein, could not be taken, as a matter of construction, to import an obligation to pay compensation. But he maintained that a constitutional prohibition against compulsory acquisition of property without public necessity and payment of compensation was deducible from what he called the "spirit of the Constitution", which, according to him, was a valid test for judging the constitutionality of a statute. The Constitution, being avowedly one for establishing liberty, justice and equality and a government of a tree people with only limited powers, must be held to contain an implied prohibition against taking private property without just compensation and in the absence of a public purpose. He relied on certain American decisions and text-books as supporting the view that a constitutional prohibition can be derived by implication from the spirit of the Constitution where no express prohibition has been enacted in that behalf. Articles 31-A and 31-B barred only objections based on alleged infringements of the fundamental right conferred by Part III, but if, from the other provisions thereof. It could be inferred that there must be a public purpose and payment of compensation before private property could be compulsorily acquired by the State, there was nothing in the two articles aforesaid to preclude objection on the ground that the impugned Acts do not satisfy these requirements and are, therefore, unconstitutional. In addition to the aforesaid grounds of attack, which were common to all the three impugned statutes, the validity of each of them or of some specific provisions thereof was also challenged on some special grounds. It will be convenient to deal with them after disposing of the main contentions summarised above which are common to all the three batches of cases. These contentions are in my judgment, devoid of substance and force and I have no hesitation in rejecting them. The fact of the matter is the zamindars lost the battle in the last round when this court upheld the constitutionality of the Amendment Act which the Provisional Parliament enacted with the object, among others, of putting an end to this litigation. And it is no disparagement to the learned counsel to say that what remained of the campaign has been fought with such weak arguments as over-taxed ingenuity could suggest ;