SHANTI PARKASH Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Civil Writ Nos. 1430, 1473, 1410, 1454, 1590 and 1591 of 1970 are being disposed of together by this judgment as they involve certain common questions of law. The facts in some of these cases are not exactly the same but these can be discussed separately, in so far as they affect the final decision, after the legal principles involved have been clearly grasped by reference to a large number of rulings and statutory provisions cited before me by the learned counsel for the parties. The references in the general discussion in the earlier part of the judgment are to the facts, averments, pleadings or annexures in Shanti Parkash and others V. The State of Haryana and others (Civil Writ No. 1430 of 1970).

(2.) The petitioners in all these cases are lease-holders of lands situated in different villages in the State of Haryana, respondent No. 1. They were granted leases of barren or banjar lands under Section 5 of the East Punjab Utilisation of Lands Act, 1949 (East Punjab Act No. 38 of 1949, which may hereinafter be referred to, for the sake of brevity, as 'the Act'). The leases were granted by the Collector, respondent No. 2, in or about the year 1951 for long terms and wherever the period of lease as originally fixed was shorter, it was ultimately extended to a period of 20 years. In some of these cases, the original or the extended period of the lease is due to come to an end within a year or so. The lease-holders claim to have sunk a good deal of labour and capital in improving and developing this land and in making it fit for cultivation. Respondent No. 2 has, however, ordered rather a premature determination of these leases and seeks to take over possession of the lands under Section 6 of the Act without payment of any compensations and the various reasons given for this step are that the lessees have been guilty of non-payment or irregularity in the payment of rents or that the land had been sublet by them or that, in contravention of the provisions of the Act, crops other than food and fodder had been grown on the demised lands.

(3.) The vires of certain provisions of the Act and in particular of Section 6, which may seem to have caused the maximum trouble in all quarters, has been challenged in these cases. In order to appreciate the various submissions of the learned counsel for the parties and for properly applying the principles of law involved, it would be necessary to know when and why the main Act came to be passed and why certain sections came to be inserted in the Act later on. It would also be necessary to keep in mind the fact whether the Act or the sections that came to be added afterwards were pre-Constitution or post-Constitution legislative measures and what were the circumstances under which the principal or the amending Acts came to be passed.