Krishna Iyer, J. - (1.) Calcutta or Cochin, for the urban people of India, the shocking scarcity of a roof to rest one's tired bones is an unhappy problem of social justice that compels enactment of control of rent and eviction laws. In the case now before us, attacking the constitutionality of legislation handcuffing the landlord-proprietariat's right of eviction, the law has to be tested not merely by the cold print of Art, 19 (1) (f) but also by the public concern of Art. 19 (5) and the compassionate animus of Article.39. Parts III and IV of the Constitution together constitute a complex of promises the nation has to keep and the legislation challenged before us is in partial fulfilment of this tryst with the people. These observations become necessary in limine since counsel for the respondents dismissed the concept of social justice as extraneous to an insightful understanding of the section invalidated by the High Court, while we think that judicial conscience is not a mere matter of citations of precedents but of activist appraisal of social tears to wipe out which the state is obligated under the Constitution.
(2.) The two appeals before us, raising substantially identical points, have been heard together and are being disposed of by a common judgment. Both of them stem from a decision of the Calcutta High Court reported as Sailendra Nath v. S. E. Dutt, AIR 1971 Cal 331. One of the decisions under appeal (C.A. 2063 of 1973) was rendered by a single Judge of the High Court following a Division Bench ruling of the same Court (i.e. the one reported as AIR 1971 Cal,331) since he was obviously bound by it:
(3.) A provision imparting some sort of retroactivity to a 1969 legislative amendment implanting additional restrictions on eviction of premises under the earlier West Bengal rent control law has been voided by the High Court in the judgments under appeal. The aggrieved tenant in each case has appealed and the State, not being directly a party to the litigation, has entered appearance to support the legislation and to challenge the Calcutta decision to the extent it has invalidated the retrospective part of the statute.;