Gokal Chand Mittal, J. - (1.) Whether Section 241 of the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911, (hereinafter called the Act), is ultra vires Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution of India, being arbitrary and giving no guideline as to under what circumstances the State Government should create a notified area committee without affording a hearing to the inhabitants of the locality, is the primary point which the full bench is called upon to determine in this set of four writ petitions before us.
(2.) In order to decide the aforesaid point it, will suffice to notice the facts of C.W. P. No. 276 of 1979. In the area of Village Begowal, tehsil and district Kapurthala, a Gram Sabha was constituted under the Punjab Gram Panchayats Act, 1952. Fresh election for the Gram Panchayat was notified to be held on 16th of August, 1978, but that election was not held as the government proposed to declare the area in village Begowal as a notified area under Section 241 of the Act. The Governor of Punjab, in exercise of powers conferred under Section 241 of the Act, issued notification dated 19th of October, 1978, published in the Punjab government Gazette on 27th of October,1978, declaring the local area comprising village Begowal in the Kapurthala district, the boundaries of which were described in the Schedule annexed to the notification, to be a notified area for the purpose of the said Act. An extract from the said notification has been attached as Annexure P-1 to the writ petitionen. The Gram Sabha, Begowal, and a member thereof, filed the writ petition on 24 th of January, 1979, in this court to challenge the aforesaid notification and in para 4 thereof it was stated that no notification under Section 242 of the Act had been issued enforcing all or some of the section of the Act in the notified area and if there is any, the petitioner sought liberty to challenge the same. In the written statement it was alleged that the notification dated 2nd of February, 1979, had been published in exercise of power under Section 242 of the Act applying certain section of the Act to the notified area committee. The Challenge to the vires of Section 241 and 242 of the Act was on the following grounds:- 1. Section 241 and 242 of the Act confer arbitrary power on the Executive, the exercise of which leads to discrimination, as no guideline has been provided as to how to apply them and for which area and thus are ultra vires Article 14 of Constitution. 2. While there is an elaborate procedure provided in Section 4 and 7 of the Act of declaring a municipality, for altering the limits thereof and for exclusion of some local area from it, after inviting objections to the aforesaid proposals and for taking a final decision after considering those objection, according to the petitioners, no such provisions made while issuing the notification under Section 241 and 242 of the Act and the Execution had been given arbitrary power to create a notified area and to apply the Act or some part of it without affording an opportunity to the inhabitants to place their whishes before the State Government before taking a final decision Since one procedure, has been laid down in Ss. 4 to 7 and a different procedure has been laid in Section 241 and 242 of the Act, Section 241 and 242 are ultra vires Art. 14 of the constitution. There is a provision in Section 10 of the Act giving power to the State Government to issue the notification to withdraw from the operation of the act the area of any municipality constituted thereunder without inviting objections of the inhabitants of the municipality and this provision has been struck down by a Letters Patent Bench of this Court in State of Punjab v. Dewan Chand 1978-80 Pun LR 686: (AIR 1979 Punj & Har 46) and on the same reasoning these two sections also deserve to be struck down.
(3.) In the written statement, all the aforesaid points have been controverted and it is pleaded by the State that the notifications are valid, Ss. 241 and 242 of the Act are intra vires as there is enough guideline provided in these section and it is not necessary that a hearing must be afforded to the petitioner or that there must be a provision for affording a hearing.;