Ram Prasad Narayan Sahi And Another vs The State Of Bihar And Others

Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Civil Appeal No. 59 of 1952

Decision Date: 20 February 1953

Coram: M. Patanjali Sastri, B.K. Mukherjea, Vivian Bose, Ghulam Hasan, Natwarlal H. Bhagwati

In the case titled Ram Prasad Narayan Sahi and another versus the State of Bihar and others, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment on 20 February 1953. The judgment was authored by Justice M. Patanjali Sastri and the bench consisted of Justices M. Patanjali Sastri, B. K. Mukherjea, Vivian Bose, Ghulam Hasan and Natwarlal H. Bhagwati. The petitioners were Ram Prasad Narayan Sahi and another; the respondents were the State of Bihar and other interested parties. The decision is reported in 1953 AIR 215 and 1953 SCR 1129, and it has been subsequently cited in a number of reports, including RF 1956 SC 479, F 1958 SC 538, R 1961 SC 1570, R 1962 SC 1371, R 1963 SC 222, R 1974 SC 1044, RF 1980 SC 1789, RF 1983 SC 1, RF 1986 SC 872 and RF 1992 SC 1277. The substantive provisions discussed involved Articles 13 and 14 of the Constitution of India, 1950, and the Sathi Lands (Restoration) Act, 1950, which declared certain land settlements void and was examined for its validity in view of the fundamental right to equal protection of the laws and the principle that discrimination must be reasonable.

The factual background recorded that the Court of Wards, acting on the recommendation of the Board of Revenue, granted to the petitioners a large tract of land belonging to the Bettiah Raj. At the time the Bettiah Raj lands were under the administration of the Court of Wards, and the grant was made at half the normal rates. Several years later the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress expressed the view that the settlement of those lands was contrary to public interest. In response, the Bihar Legislature enacted the Sathi Lands (Restoration) Act, 1950. That Act declared that, notwithstanding any other law then in force, the settlement granted to the petitioners was to be deemed null and void, that no party to the settlement or any successor could be considered to have acquired any right or incurred any liability thereunder, and it empowered the Collector to evict the petitioners if they refused to restore the lands to their original status.

Contesting the validity of that enactment, the petitioners filed an application under Article 226 of the Constitution seeking a writ of mandamus to restrain the State of Bihar from executing any action under the Sathi Lands (Restoration) Act. The Court observed that there were numerous other settlements of Bettiah Raj lands made on similar terms, against which the Government had taken no enforcement action. The Court held that the dispute between the petitioners and the State was essentially a private dispute that should be decided by a judicial tribunal in accordance with the law applicable to the specific case. Moreover, by singling out the petitioners for the imposition of the Act and by depriving them of their right to have the dispute adjudicated by a duly constituted court, the legislature had contravened Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection of the laws to every citizen. Consequently, the enactment was declared void. Legislation which singles out a particular individual from his fellow subjects and visits him

It was observed that imposing a disability on a particular person that is not imposed on others, and simultaneously removing the right to lodge a complaint, constitutes a highly discriminatory act. The Court noted that, while there is a general presumption in favour of the constitutionality of a legislative enactment and it is assumed that a Legislature understands and correctly appreciates the needs of its people, this presumption loses its force when a statute, on its face, contains no classification whatsoever. The Court explained that when the law makes no attempt to select any individual or group on the basis of a differentiating attribute that is unique to that individual or group and not possessed by others, the presumption of constitutionality offers little or no assistance to the State. The decisions in Ameerunnissa Begum v. Mahboob Begum [1953] S.C.R. 404 and Gulf of Colorado etc. Co. v. Ellis [165 U.S. 150] were cited in support of this view.

The matter before the Court was a civil appeal, numbered 59 of 1952, arising from a judgment and order dated 3 January 1952 issued by the High Court of Judicature at Patna, where Justices Ramaswami and Sarjoo Prosad had presided. The appeal also involved an application filed under article 226 of the Constitution, recorded as Miscellaneous Judicial Case No. 204 of 1950, and the original petition numbered 20 of 1952 filed under article 32 of the Constitution, which was heard together with the appeal. Counsel for the appellants consisted of P. R. Das assisted by B. Sen, while the respondents were represented by M. C. Setalvad, Attorney-General for India, and Mahabir Prasad, Advocate-General of Bihar, assisted by G. N. Joshi. The judgment was delivered on 20 February 1953.

Chief Justice Patanjali Sastri, speaking for himself and concurring with the forthcoming judgment of Justice Mukherjea, added a few observations on the important constitutional question. He recounted that a report highlighting the settlement of certain lands with the petitioners, as well as with other individuals such as Sri Prajapati Mishra, and the unlawful manner in which those settlements were effected, had been submitted to the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress. After conducting an inquiry it deemed appropriate, the Committee concluded that the settlement of those lands with the petitioners was contrary to law and public policy. Consequently, it recommended that the State of Bihar should take steps to restore the lands to the Bettiah Estate.

Following the Committee’s recommendation, the Government made a request to both the petitioners and to Sri Prajapati Mishra to return the lands to the Bettiah Estate. While Sri Prajapati Mishra complied and returned the land settled with him, the petitioners refused to do so. The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Sathi Lands (Restoration) Bill was then quoted, stating that, having held that the settlement of Sathi lands in the District of Champaran under the Court of Wards with Sri Ram Prasad Narayan Sahi and Shri Ram Rekha Prasad Narayan Sahi was contrary to law, and noting that those two individuals had refused to return the lands to the Bettiah Estate, the Government decided to enact legislation to restore the lands.

The Court observed that the legislation challenged in the present proceedings was composed of three distinct sections. Section 2(1) declared, notwithstanding any existing law, that the settlement obtained by the appellants was null and void and that no party to that settlement or any successor in interest could be deemed to have acquired any right or incurred any liability thereunder. Section 2(2) stipulated that the appellants and their successors in interest were required to vacate possession of the land from the date on which the Act commenced; if they failed to do so, the Collector of Champaran was empowered to eject them and to restore possession of the land to the Bettiah Wards Estate. Section 2(3) provided that, upon restoration of the lands to the estate, the estate would refund to the lessees any salami money paid and the cost of any improvements, if any such costs existed.

In support of the legislation, the State of Bihar advanced several arguments before the Court. It asserted that it was well settled that a legislature possessing plenary powers could, within the scope of those powers, enact a law applicable generally to society, to an individual, or to a particular class of individuals. The State further submitted that the grants of land belonging to the Bettiah Estate, which had been made by the Court of Wards, were of doubtful validity and therefore had been addressed by the impugned Act. The State contended that the appellants had presented no evidence beyond an unsubstantiated allegation that approximately two thousand acres of land had been settled in a manner that treated similarly situated persons differently, and it argued that, in the context of the Act, there was a reasonable basis for classification.

The Court noted that the State relied on the decision of the majority in Chiran v. Union of India (1) [1950] S.C.R. 869 to support its contentions. In that case, the majority had upheld legislation even though the legislation adversely affected the rights and interests of shareholders of a particular joint-stock company, on the ground that mismanagement of the company’s affairs had prejudicially affected the production of an essential commodity and had caused serious unemployment among a section of the community. However, the Court also recorded the dissent of Justice Das, who, together with another judge, held that legislation directed against a particular named person or corporation was plainly discriminatory and could not be constitutionally justified, even if it yielded some public benefit. Justice Das expressed apprehension about the danger inherent in special enactments that deprived particular named persons of liberty or property because the legislature deemed them guilty of misconduct. In his dissenting opinion, he stated: “Legislation based upon mismanagement or other misconduct as the differentia and made applicable to a specified individual or corporate body is not far removed from the notorious parliamentary procedure formerly employed in Britain of punishing individual delinquents by passing bills of attainder, and should not, I think, receive judicial encouragement.”

The Court remarked that the infamous parliamentary device formerly employed in Britain, whereby individual offenders were punished by the enactment of bills of attainder, ought not to receive encouragement from the judiciary. The Judge noted that earlier apprehensions about such legislative overreach have been realised. Recently the Court had examined a matter arising in Hyderabad, Civil Appeal No. 63 of 1952, Ameerunnissa Begum v. Mahboob Begum, in which the duly constituted legislature of that State intervened in a succession dispute between two rival groups of claimants to a deceased person’s estate. The legislature effectively dismissed one claim and awarded the property to the other by fashioning a special law to that effect. The present dispute from Bihar is of essentially the same character. The appellants claim title to certain lands in the Bettiah Estate based on a settlement that they assert was lawfully obtained from the Court of Wards. The Estate, however, alleges that the settlement was not for its benefit and contravened law because the Court of Wards had not, at the time, applied its mind to the question, as reported in [1953] S.C.R. 404. The Court emphasized that this controversy is a pure dispute between private parties that must be resolved by courts duly empowered to adjudicate contested legal rights, after observing established procedural safeguards such as the right to be heard and the right to produce witnesses. The law guarantees these protections equally to all persons, and Article 14 of the Constitution forbids any State from denying them. The appellants, the Court observed, have been denied such protection. A political organization belonging to the ruling party, after conducting an inquiry of its own choosing, concluded that the settlement was “contrary to the provisions of law and public policy.” Relying on that conclusion, the State Legislature declared the settlement null and void, ordered the eviction of the appellants, and directed the restoration of the lands to the Estate. The reasons advanced for this extraordinary legislative action were striking and troubling. It was asserted that agitation among local tenants and opposition from residents to the appellants’ possession of the lands had resulted in breach of peace and the institution of criminal proceedings. The Court observed that whenever a segment of the community, asserting an adverse claim, disturbs a person’s quiet enjoyment of property, the Bihar Government appears to deem police intervention unnecessary until the person is lawfully evicted, preferring instead that the Legislature intervene by enacting a law to dispossess the individual. Legislation of the type now before the Court, the judgment warned, is designed to drain

It was observed that the legislation threatened to drain the vitality from the rule of law that the Constitution unmistakably proclaims, and it was expressed that the democratic process in this country should not operate in such a manner. This appeal reached the Court on a certificate that had been granted by the High Court of Patna under article 132 (1) of the Constitution. The appeal challenged a judgment delivered by a Division Bench of that High Court on 3 January 1952, in which the learned judges had dismissed a petition filed by the appellants under article 226 of the Constitution. The petition sought a writ of mandamus directing the opposite party to refrain from taking any action under the Sathi Lands (Restoration) Act, an enactment passed by the Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1950, which the petitioners contended was void and unconstitutional. To understand the points of dispute between the parties, the Court found it necessary to set out the material facts in brief. Maharani Janki Koer, who was identified as respondent No. 2 in the appeal, owned the large Bettiah Raj Estate in Bihar; the estate was held and administered on her behalf by the Court of Wards, Bihar, an institution created under Bengal Act IX of 1879. On 19 July 1946, the appellants—two brothers who were distantly related to the Maharani—submitted a representation to the Government of Bihar through the Estate’s Manager, requesting that they be settled in raiyati right over two hundred bighas of land, preferably in the Sathi farm or Materia farm, together with a specified amount of waste land. The following day, 20 July 1946, the then Manager of the Wards Estate wrote to the Collector of Champaran recommending that the applicants be granted the requested settlement without the obligation to pay any selami. The Collector did not accept this proposal, and the Commissioner of the Tirhut Division also refused to approve it, causing the matter to be referred to the Board of Revenue. The Board recommended that settlement could proceed provided the applicants agreed to pay selami at half the normal rate. On 14 October 1946, the Provincial Government accepted the Board’s recommendation, and six days later the Court of Wards received a cheque for Rs 5,000 from one of the lessees as payment of selami and rent for the fiscal year 1354 F.S. Possession of the lands was handed over to the appellants on 2 November 1946. On 18 November 1946, the Manager of the Court of Wards issued a formal order fixing the selami at Rs 3,988 annas odd and the annual rent at Rs 797 annas odd. On that same day, a Hisab Bandobasti form, the standard document used in the Estate for raiyati settlements, was signed by the Circle Officer on behalf of the Court of Wards and by one of the lessees for himself as well as

It was not contested that the lessees had remained in possession of the lands after the settlement, paying the rent that had been stipulated. On 3 June 1950, the Bihar Legislative Assembly enacted a statute known as the Sathi Lands (Restoration) Act, which obtained the Governor’s assent on 13 June 1950. The preamble of the Act declared that its purpose was to restore certain lands belonging to the Bettiah Wards Estate that had been settled in violation of legal provisions in favour of particular individuals. Section 2 of the Act contained three operative subsections. The first subsection declared that the settlement of the Sathi lands listed in the schedule, made on behalf of the Bettiah Court of Wards Estate with the appellants pursuant to the Manager’s order dated 18 November 1946, was null and void, and that no party to that settlement or any successor-in-interest could be deemed to have acquired any right or incurred any liability thereunder. The second subsection directed that the lessees and their successors must vacate possession of the lands from the date the Act commenced, and that, should they fail to do so, the Collector of Champaran was authorized to eject them and restore the lands to the Bettiah Estate. The third subsection provided that, upon restoration of the lands to the estate, the Bettiah Wards Estate must return to the lessees the selami money they had paid and also reimburse any amounts they had spent on improvements to the lands prior to the Act’s commencement. In effect, the legislation declared the lease granted by the Bettiah Wards Estate to the appellants on 18 November 1946 to be illegal and inoperative, prescribed the procedure for giving effect to that declaration, and ordered the eviction of the lessees from the lands. On 28 August 1950, the appellants filed a petition under article 226 of the Constitution in the Patna High Court, challenging the validity of the Sathi Lands Act and seeking a writ restraining the respondents from taking any action under the Act or from interfering with the appellants’ possession of the leased lands. The petitioners argued that, by enacting the impugned legislation, the Bihar Legislature had usurped the judicial function and that the statute was not a law in the proper sense of the term. They further contended that the Act was void because it conflicted with the petitioners’ fundamental rights guaranteed under articles 14, 19(1)(f) and 31 of the Constitution. The respondents, in their counter-affidavit, defended the legislation and opposed the petitioners’ prayer.

The settlement of the lands that formed the subject of the dispute was carried out by the Court of Wards in favour of the appellants, but it was contended that this settlement did not serve the benefit of the estate nor the advantage of the ward, and that the Wards Estate had entered into the transaction without giving it the requisite consideration. It was further asserted that, after the settlement, considerable unrest arose among the tenants in the vicinity, an agitation that subsequently gave rise to the initiation of criminal proceedings. In view of these developments, the matter was drawn to the attention of the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress, which expressed the view that the settlement of those lands ran counter to public interest. Consequently, the lessees were directed to vacate the lands, and when they refused to do so, the legislation that is now under challenge was enacted.

The petition challenging the legislation was heard by a Division Bench comprising Justice Ramaswami and Justice Sarjoo Pershad. Justice Ramaswami examined every argument presented by the petitioners and concluded that the Act was not beyond the legislative competence of the Bihar Legislature and that it was not void under article 13(1) of the Constitution. He further opined that the case did not present a suitable occasion for interference by the High Court under article 226 of the Constitution. Justice Pershad, on the other hand, voiced significant doubts about whether a enactment that in form and substance resembled a decree of a court could be within the legislature’s competence and whether it was justified by the Constitution. Nevertheless, he concurred with his colleague that the matter did not warrant the High Court’s discretionary interference under article 226, and he suggested that the appropriate remedy for the petitioners might be a suit instituted in a regular court. As a result, the petition of the appellants was dismissed, and the propriety of that dismissal became the subject of the present appeal.

Counsel for the appellant, Mr P R Das, advanced the principal ground of appeal, arguing that the impugned legislation was void because it infringed the appellant’s fundamental right to equality under article 14 of the Constitution. The bench found this submission to be substantial. After hearing the learned Attorney-General on the matter, the bench was convinced that the contention raised by counsel for the appellant was well founded and deserved to succeed, irrespective of any other issues that might be raised in the appeal. The bench then referred to several of its own decisions that had examined the nature and scope of the guarantee embodied in the equal protection clause of the Constitution, noting that the principles governing that clause were now fairly well settled. The clause, the bench observed, is intended to eliminate hostile discrimination, oppression, or inequality, and, since it applies to all persons who are similarly situated, the legislature retains the authority to classify persons and matters in order to achieve legitimate legislative objectives.

In this case, the Court observed that the legislature is permitted to classify persons and things in order to achieve specific legislative objectives, but any such classification must be non-arbitrary and must rest on a rational basis that is linked to the purpose the legislature intends to accomplish. The Court noted that the statute under review had singled out two particular individuals and a single transaction between them and another private party, namely the Bettiah Wards Estate, and had declared that transaction to be null and void on the ground that it contravened legal provisions, even though no judicial tribunal had yet adjudicated on that point. The Court held that it was unnecessary for the present purpose to examine the extent to which the doctrine of separation of powers has been recognized in the Constitution, nor to consider whether the legislature may usurp judicial functions by deciding private disputes and by declaring the rights of one party against another. Likewise, the Court found it unnecessary to delineate the limits within which legislation affecting private rights may be exercised under the Constitution. The Court then turned to the explicit constitutional limitation that no law may be valid if it takes away or abridges the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution. Consequently, the Court stated that if the legislation in question falls within the scope of article 14, it must be declared invalid. This raised the question of whether the impugned enactment was in fact discriminatory and, if so, whether such discrimination could be justified by any principle of reasonable classification. The Court affirmed that the appellants were merely two among many leaseholders who possessed lands in raiyati right under the Bettiah Wards Estate, and that it could not be disputed that those lands had been allotted to them on the recommendation of the Board of Revenue after due consideration of the views expressed by the Manager of the Estate, the Collector, and the Divisional Commissioner. The appellants were acknowledged to be paying rents that were ordinarily assessed on lands of similar description in the locality. The Court referred to the learned Attorney-General’s reliance on section 18 of the Court of Wards Act, which the Attorney-General contended was violated by the lease in dispute. Section 18 of the Court of Wards Act provides: “The Court may sanction the giving of leases or farms of any property under its charge … and may direct the doing of all such other acts as it may judge to be most for the benefit of the property and the advantage of the Ward.” The Court recognized that this provision makes the Court of Wards the sole authority to determine the benefit to the estate or the advantage of the ward, but it was alleged that the Court of Wards had not applied its jurisdiction properly when it granted the lease to the appellants at a rate that was half of the usual market rate.

It was observed that the Court of Wards had failed to give proper consideration when it granted a lease to the appellants at only half of the normal selami rate, resulting in a loss to the Wards Estate of approximately Rs 4,000, an amount that could have been recovered from any ordinary lessee. The Court noted that this argument, while it could be raised, did not constitute a decisive ground for setting aside the lease in a legal proceeding, and that the present case was not concerned with determining whether the lease itself was proper or advantageous to the estate. Instead, the Court clarified that the issue for determination was whether the statutory provisions were discriminatory against the appellants and, if so, whether such discrimination could be reasonably justified. The affidavit filed by the appellants in support of their petition, specifically paragraph 9, asserted that many other individuals had received leases on comparable terms from the Bettiah Wards Estate. The affidavit set out clauses (b), (c) and (d) as follows: (b) during the long period of administration by the Court of Wards, leases or settlements of land were granted without any selami or proper rent, a practice that continued into recent times when thousands of bighas were settled with numerous persons; (c) in 1945 the authorities decided to make large-scale settlements with returned war soldiers on a selami equal to five times the average local rent for similar lands; and (d) in the years 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1949 a substantial number of settlements covering about 2,000 acres were made on the basis of ten years’ local rental, and in some cases, for sound reasons, on five years’ rental. In the respondents’ counter-affidavit, paragraph 12, these statements were neither denied nor contested; the respondents simply affirmed that the leases had been granted in the regular course of management. The Court observed that Justice Ramaswami had dismissed this portion of the case on the ground that the appellants had not provided detailed particulars of the settlements, noting that such details were unnecessary because the respondents had not challenged the correctness of the statements. Further, the respondents’ counter-affidavit, paragraph 10, identified Shri Prajapati Mishra as another individual who had received a similar land settlement from the Bettiah Estate, and it recorded that both the appellants’ case and the Mishra case had been brought before the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress, which concluded that both settlements were contrary to existing legal provisions.

After the request was made that the lessees restore their lands to the Bettiah Estate, Prajapati Mishra complied and returned his lands, while the appellants declined to do so. In their rejoinder, the appellants asserted that Prajapati Mishra had not actually vacated the land; instead, they claimed that he had created a trust over the property, that he served as chairman of the board of trustees, and that the trust continued to occupy the land. The State of Bihar later addressed the same issue in an additional affidavit, admitting that Mishra had indeed executed a trust and that the trustees had taken possession of the property. The State further stated that Mishra, who was himself one of the trustees, had surrendered the lands in two instalments, but that the remaining trustees had not surrendered their portions, and that legal counsel was being consulted to determine how to recover the property from those trustees. This sequence of statements gave an appearance of inconsistency, and the Court noted that the State’s reliance on such facts was not well-founded in its effort to refute the appellants’ challenge to the legislation on the ground of discrimination. Nonetheless, it was clear that the appellants were not the only lessees of the Bettiah Estate who had obtained settlements of land on the basis of a five-year rental term. The sworn statements of the appellants, which were not contested by the respondents, indicated that many other persons occupied a similar position but were not subjected to the same expropriatory legislation. The defect in the legislation, however, extended beyond a mere difference in treatment between the appellants and other lessees of the Wards Estate where settlements were made on comparable terms. When a lease is granted by a Court of Wards not for the benefit of the estate or the ward, it is for a court of law to determine whether the lease conforms to the provisions of the Court of Wards Act. If the lessor seeks to cancel such a lease, the lessee has a legal right to defend the lease and to demonstrate to the court that the lease does not contravene the law. Conversely, if the lessee is dispossessed, the lessee may sue to recover possession by establishing that the dispossession was unlawful. The controversy before the Court was therefore a pure legal dispute between two private parties. The legislation, in the Court’s view, had singled out these two individuals and denied them the constitutional right of every Indian citizen to have his rights adjudicated by an independent judicial tribunal in accordance with the law applicable to his case.

The Court observed that every citizen possesses a fundamental right of access to a court of law for the redress of his just grievances, and that this Act had deprived the appellants of that right. The Court described the deprivation as an extreme form of discrimination that singled out a particular individual, imposed a disability on him that no other person suffered, and even denied him the ability to lodge a complaint. The learned Attorney-General, despite presenting his case with customary fairness and skill, was unable to produce any convincing or satisfactory justification for the legislation in question. The Court acknowledged that a presumption in favour of the constitutionality of a legislative enactment ordinarily exists and that it is presumed that a legislature understands and correctly appreciates the needs of its people. However, the Court noted that where the face of a statute shows no classification whatsoever and no attempt has been made to select any individual or group on the basis of a differentiating attribute that others do not possess, that presumption offers little or no assistance to the State. In support of this view, the Court cited the observation of Mr. Justice Brewer in Gulf Colorado etc. Co. v. Ellis (1), stating that “to carry the presumption to the extent of holding that there must be some undisclosed and unknown reason for subjecting certain individuals or corporations to hostile and discriminatory legislation is to make the protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment a mere rope of sand”. The Court further held that the present matter fell squarely within the principle articulated by this Court in Ameerunnissa, Begum v. Mahboob Begum (2). Accordingly, the Court allowed the appeal, set aside the judgment of the High Court, and ordered that a writ of mandamus be issued directing the respondents not to take any steps under The Sathi Lands (Restoration) Act of 1950 or to interfere with the appellants’ possession of the lands comprised in the lease referred to in that Act. The Court ordered that the appellants be awarded costs in both courts. Justice Vivian Bose wrote that he was in entire agreement with the Lord Chief Justice and with his brother Mukherjea. Justice Ghulam Hasan expressed his agreement with the Lord Chief Justice and with his brother Mukherjea. Justice Bhagwati stated that he entirely agreed with the judgment delivered by the Lord Chief Justice and his brother Mukherjea and had nothing further to add. The appeal was allowed. Agent for the appellants: I. N. Shroff. Agent for the respondents: G. H. Rajadhyaksha. (1) 165 U-S 150. (2) [1953] S.C.R. 404.