Gangadharrao Narayanrao Majumdar vs The State Of Bombay And Another

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

Court: supreme-court

Case Number: Civil Appeals Nos. 155 to 160 of 1956

Decision Date: 3 October, 1960

Coram: K.N. Wanchoo, Bhuvneshwar P. Sinha, J.L. Kapur, P.B. Gajendragadkar

In the matter titled Gangadharrao Narayanrao Majumdar versus The State of Bombay and another, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment on 3 October 1960. The opinion was authored by Justice K.N. Wanchoo, with Justices Bhuvneshwar P. Sinha, J.L. Kapur and P.B. Gajendragadkar forming the bench. The petitioner, Gangadharrao Narayanrao Majumdar, challenged the State of Bombay and an additional respondent, and the case was recorded under the citation 1961 AIR 288 and 1961 SCR (1) 943, with related citator references R 1961 SC 291, R 1965 SC 632 and other notes. The central issue concerned the constitutional validity of the Bombay Personal Inams Abolition Act, 1952 (Bombay Act 42 of 1953), specifically the interpretation of the terms “estate” and “right in an estate”, and the applicability of sections 4, 5, 7 and 17 of that Act, as well as section 3(5) of the Bombay Land Revenue Code, 1879, in light of Articles 31 and 31‑A of the Constitution of India. The appellants possessed personal inams governed by Bombay Acts II and VII of 1863, which allowed them to pay land revenue at a rate lower than the full assessment. After the enactment of the Bombay Personal Inams Abolition Act, the appellants contested the Act on two principal grounds: first, that the property affected by the Act did not constitute an estate because the provisions of sections 4 and 5 extinguished only the inamdar’s right to appropriate the difference between the full assessment and the quit rent, a right they argued was not an estate within the meaning of Article 31‑A; second, that the Act failed to provide compensation for the loss of that property. The Court held that the inamdar’s right to appropriate the assessment‑quit‑rent difference was a revenue‑related right, and thereby qualified as a right in an estate under the definition in Article 31‑A(2)(b). This right also fell within the ambit of section 3(5) of the Bombay Land Revenue Code, 1879, confirming its status as an estate under Article 31‑A. Consequently, the Act’s extinguishment or modification of inamdar rights in inam estates was protected by Article 31‑A. Regarding the second ground, the Court observed that subsection 5 of section 17 of the Act, which denied compensation for the loss of the revenue difference, was not invalid because Article 31‑A shielded the Act from challenges under Article 31, the sole provision dealing with compensation. The judgment thus affirmed the constitutional validity of the Bombay Personal Inams Abolition Act in the context of the appellants’ claims.

The orders of the Bombay High Court dated July 19 1954 in Special Civil Application No. 1205 of 1954 and July 30 1954 in Special Civil Application No. 1309 of 1954 are recorded. The counsel appearing for the appellants were Purshottam Trikamdas, V. M. Limaye, E. Udayaratnam and S. S. Shukla. For the respondents, the representatives were H. N. Sanyal, Additional Solicitor‑General of India, together with N. P. Nathwani, K. L. Hathi and R. H. Dhebar. The judgment was pronounced on 3 October 1960 and delivered by Wanchoo J. These six appeals, each arising from a certificate granted by the Bombay High Court, presented a single question for determination, namely whether the Bombay Personal Inams Abolition Act, No. XLII of 1953 (hereinafter “the Act”) was constitutionally valid. The matter was to be decided by this judgment. The appellants, who possessed personal inams, claimed their rights were governed by Bombay Acts No. 11 and No. VII of 1863. In the High Court the Act had been challenged on several grounds, but only two of those challenges were pressed before this Court: first, the contention that the property dealt with under the Act did not constitute an estate; and second, the argument that the Act failed to provide any compensation for the deprivation of the appellants’ property. The writ petitions were opposed by the State of Bombay, which maintained that the Act was shielded from attack by Article 31‑A of the Constitution. Before addressing the two issues raised, the Court set out a brief overview of the rights that holders of personal inams enjoyed under Bombay Acts No. II and No. VII of 1863. Act No. 11 applied to certain regions of the Presidency of Bombay and concerned landholders in those areas who enjoyed either total or partial exemption from government land‑revenue. The Act dealt with situations where the title to such exemption had not yet been formally adjudicated. It provided that if those landholders consented to accept the terms and conditions laid down in the Act, in lieu of being required to prove their entitlement to exemption, the Provincial Government would, on a final basis, authorise and guarantee the perpetual continuance of the land in favour of the holders, their heirs and assigns, subject to the prescribed terms and conditions. The central provision of the Act stipulated that such landholders could retain their lands forever provided they paid (i) a fixed annual amount called nazrana, which served as a commutation of all Crown claims relating to succession and transfer and was calculated at the rate of one anna for every rupee of assessment, and (ii) a quit‑rent equal to one‑fourth of the assessment. The Act also contained other provisions for cases where landholders were unwilling to accept its conditions and preferred to have their claims adjudicated; however, those provisions are not relevant to the present considerations.

In this case, the Court explained that the principal benefit granted to landholders by Act 11 consisted of the right to retain their lands while paying only one‑fourth of the assessed revenue, rather than the full assessment together with an additional one‑sixteenth of the assessment. In practical terms this arrangement required the landholder to remit a total of five annas for every rupee of the full assessment, thereby allowing the landholder to keep the remaining eleven annas in the rupee for his own use. The Court then turned to Act VII, which dealt with comparable landholders situated in the other parts of the Presidency of Bombay. Act VII contained analogous provisions, but introduced a difference: under section 6 of that Act the landholders were required to pay only two annas for each rupee of assessment as quit‑rent. Consequently, a person who fell within the ambit of Act VII discharged a payment of two annas per rupee of assessment and was able to retain fourteen annas in the rupee for himself. The Court noted that these financial arrangements represented the essential rights that the statutes sought to secure for the holders of the lands concerned.

The Court then proceeded to examine the substantive provisions of the statute. Section 2(c) defined the term “inamdar” as a holder of a personal inam and expressly included any person who lawfully held the inam either directly or through another person. Section 2(d) gave the definition of an “inam village” or “inam land”, while section 2(e) set out the definition of a “personal inam”. Section 3 stipulated that the Act would not apply to certain categories of inams, specifically those identified as devasthan inams or inams held by religious or charitable institutions. The explanatory note attached to section 3 clarified that the expression “inams held by religious or charitable institutions” referred to devasthan or dharmadaya inams that had been granted or recognized by the ruling authority for a religious or charitable purpose and that were entered as such in the alienation register maintained under section 53 of the Bombay Land Revenue Code, 1879 (hereinafter referred to as the Code), or in the records kept pursuant to the rules made under the Pensions Act, 1871. Accordingly, for the purposes of the Act, any such inam that had been held from the outset as a devasthan or dharmadaya inam and that was recorded in the appropriate registers fell outside the operation of the statute. Section 4 provided that all personal inams were to be extinguished, and, except as expressly preserved by the provisions of the Act, all rights that legally existed on the specified date in respect of those personal inams were also extinguished, subject to certain exceptions that the Court indicated were not material to the present discussion. Section 5 mandated that every inam village or inam land was liable to the payment of land‑revenue in accordance with the provisions of the Code or the rules made thereunder, and that the provisions of the Code and the rules applicable to un‑alienated lands were to be applied to such lands. Moreover, section 5 provided that an inamdar who possessed the inam land in his actual possession, or who held it through a person other than an inferior holder (subject to an exception to be mentioned later), would be principally liable to the State Government for the payment of the land‑revenue due on that land, and that he would be entitled to all the rights and would be liable

Section 5 of the Act made the holder of a personal inam, for all practical purposes, an occupant under the Code and therefore liable to pay the full land‑revenue that the Code or its rules required, eliminating the advantage previously enjoyed under Acts II and VII of 1863, where the inamdar paid only a part of the assessment and retained the balance. The Act provided an exception: where an inferior holder of the inam land paid an amount equal to the annual assessment to the holder of the personal inam, that inferior holder would become liable to the State Government and would likewise be treated as an occupant of the land under the Code. Section 7 then vested in the State Government a comprehensive list of lands, namely public roads, paths and lanes, bridges, ditches, dikes and fences, the sea‑bed and harbours, creeks below the high‑water mark, rivers, streams, nallas, lakes, wells and tanks, all canals and water‑courses, all standing and flowing water, all unbuilt village sites, waste lands and uncultivated lands that are not used for building or other non‑agricultural purposes, and it extinguished any inamdar rights in those lands. Section 8 dealt with the right to trees, while section 9 addressed the right to mines and mineral products. Section 10 provided for compensation where rights were extinguished by section 7, and section 11 gave a right of appeal from the Collector’s order made under section 10. Sections 12 through 16 covered procedural matters. Section 17 authorised payment of compensation for the extinction or modification of an inamdar’s right that was not covered by section 10, but sub‑section (5) of section 17 expressly stated that nothing in that section entitled any person to compensation on the ground that an inam village or inam land previously exempt from land‑revenue payment had been made subject to the full assessment under the Code. Section 17‑A provided for the issue of bonds, and section 18 applied the Bombay Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948, to any inam village or inam land and defined the mutual rights and obligations of an inamdar and his tenants. Section 19 authorized the making of rules, and section 20 dealt with repeals and amendments. From this analysis it emerged that the principal provisions were sections 4, 5 and 7; while section 7 included a provision for compensation for lands vested in the State, no compensation was made for the rights extinguished by sections 4 and 5. The essential right of an inamdar had been to hold his lands on payment of land‑revenue that was less than the full assessment, a right that sections 4 and 5 abolished, thereby obliging the inamdar to pay the full assessment and offering no compensation for the loss of that concession.

The Court observed that earlier the inamdar was required to pay land revenue that was less than the full assessment, and that this lesser liability constituted a right which had been removed by sections 4 and 5 of the Act. Consequently the inamdar was now obliged to pay the full assessment, and no compensation was offered for the loss incurred by the imposition of the full assessment. The Court then turned to the first contention raised by the appellants. The appellants contended that sections 4 and 5 merely extinguished the inamdar’s right to retain for himself the difference between the full assessment and the quit‑rent, and that such a right did not constitute an “estate” within the meaning of Article 31‑A of the Constitution. For the purpose of this discussion, the Court recited the relevant provisions of Article 31‑A, which read as follows: “31‑A (1) – Notwithstanding anything contained in Article 13, no law providing for – (a) the acquisition by the State of any estate or of any rights therein or the extinguishment or modification of any such rights, or (b) … (c) … (d) … (e) … – shall be deemed to be void on the ground that it is inconsistent with or takes away or abridges any of the rights conferred by Article 14, Article 19 or Article 31; provided … (2) In this article – (a) the expression ‘estate’ shall, in relation to any local area, have the same meaning as that expression or its local equivalent has in the existing law relating to land tenures in force in that area, and shall also include any jagir, inam or muafi or other similar grant and in the States of Madras and Kerala any janmam right; (b) the expression ‘rights’ in relation to an estate shall include any rights vesting in a proprietor, sub‑proprietor, under‑proprietor, tenure‑holder, raiyat, under‑raiyat or other intermediary and any rights or privileges in respect of land revenue.” The Court noted that, from the definition of “estate” in Article 31‑A(2)(a), the term expressly embraces an “inam”. Accordingly, the Court found it untenable to argue that inams are not estates within the constitutional expression. Since the Act specifically deals with inams, the Court concluded that the Act is clearly protected by Article 31‑A against any challenge under Articles 14, 19 or 31. The appellants further submitted that the right of the inamdar to appropriate for himself the portion of the full assessment remaining after payment of the quit‑rent was not a right in an estate. The Court rejected this argument, stating that because inams are estates, the right of the inamdar to retain the excess portion of the assessment arises from his ownership of the inam‑estate and therefore constitutes a right in an estate. Moreover, the definition of “rights” in Article 31‑A(2)(b) unequivocally includes such rights or privileges in respect of land revenue, leaving no doubt as to the constitutional character of the inamdar’s right.

In its reasoning, the Court observed that any right concerning an estate includes every right or privilege that relates to land revenue. Consequently, even if one were to argue that the inamdar’s right to keep the portion of the full land assessment that remains after paying the quit‑rent does not directly constitute a right in an estate, that right nevertheless becomes a right in an estate because the definition expressly embraces rights and privileges related to land revenue. The Court further noted that the right in question is covered by section 3(5) of the Code, and on that basis it also qualifies as an estate within the meaning of Article 31‑A. Accordingly, the appellants’ claim that the inams dealt with by the Act fall outside the term “estate” in Article 31‑A was rejected, and their additional contention that the right to retain the difference between the full assessment and the quit‑rent is not a right in an estate was likewise rejected. The Court therefore concluded that when the Act extinguishes or modifies the rights of inamdars in the inam estates, it is clearly protected by Article 31‑A. The next issue raised by the appellants was that the Act does not provide compensation and is therefore ultra vires of Article 31. The Court found that the Act does provide for compensation under section 10 for the portion of inam lands vested in the State by section 7, and that section 17 supplies compensation for any matters omitted by section 7 for which the inamdar is entitled to compensation. Although subsection 5 of section 17 says that no compensation is payable for the loss to the inamdar of the amount that he formerly obtained as the difference between the quit‑rent and the full assessment, the Court held that Article 31‑A shields the Act from any challenge under Article 31, which alone mandates compensation. Accordingly, the Court held that the constitutionality of the Act could not be attacked on the ground that it fails to provide compensation for the extinction of certain rights. The appeals were therefore dismissed with costs, and only one set of hearing costs was awarded.