Khatri Ram Vs State of HP

Kha­tri Ram Vs State of HP 22.11.2007

Hon’ble Mr. Jus­tice VK Gupta, Chief Justice.

Hon’ble Mr. Jus­tice Rajiv Sharma, Judge.

CWP No. 1077 of 2006

Mines and Min­er­als (Reg­u­la­tion and Devel­op­ment) Act, 1957 -

HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — ori­gin of con­cept of vil­lage com­mon land and ear­lier Leg­is­la­tion — entire con­cept of vil­lage com­mon land has been explained in detail by Sir WH Rat­ti­gan in Digest of Cus­tom­ary Law (15^th Edn.) 1989) — Pun­jab Vil­lage Com­mon Lands (Reg­u­la­tion), 1953 and Pepsu Vil­lage Com­mon Land (Reg­u­la­tion) Act, 1954 were repealed by Pun­jab Vil­lage Com­mon Lands (Reg­u­la­tion) Act, 1961 — Leg­isla­tive His­tory of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 (Act No.18 of 1974) here­inafter referred to as Act for brevity sake was enacted to pro­vide for vest­ing and uti­liza­tion of vil­lage com­mon land in State of Himachal Pradesh — Irreg­u­lar­i­ties con­tinue to be com­mit­ted by Pan­chay­ats in leas­ing out land — It has been, there­fore, con­sid­ered proper to vest shami­lat land in State Gov­ern­ment for its proper man­age­ment and uti­liza­tion — Treat­ment of amount payable to landown­ers: — Where land vested in State Gov­ern­ment has been encroached upon by any per­son before or after com­mence­ment of this act, rev­enue Offi­cer may of his own motion eject such per­son in accor­dance with pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 150 of Pun­jab Land Rev­enue 14 Act,1887 (17 of 1887), or sec­tion 163 of Himachal Pradesh Land Rev­enue Act, 1954 (17 of 1887) as case may be — (2) land reserved under clause (a) of sub-section (1) of this sec­tion shall be demar­cated by such Rev­enue Offi­cer and in such man­ner as may be pre­scribed — (3) Any scheme framed by State Gov­ern­ment under clause (b) of sub-section (1) of this sec­tion may pro­vide for terms and con­di­tions on which land is to be allot­ted — amend­ments were car­ried out in Act by Act called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Util­i­sa­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1981 — state­ment of objects and rea­sons for intro­duc­ing Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Util­i­sa­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1981 reads thus: Sec­tion 8 of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 (Act No.18 of 1974) pro­vides that all lands vested in State Gov­ern­ment under sec­tion 3 of Act, shall be uti­lized only for two pur­poses, viz — (i) an area not less than 50% of total area vested in State Gov­ern­ment for graz­ing and other com­mon pur­poses of inhab­i­tants of estate con­cerned; and (ii) remain­ing and for allot­ment to land­less per­sons — Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 was fur­ther amended by Act called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage 17 Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1987 — Among sources from which land was and is being allot­ted to both cat­e­gories, is vil­lage com­mon land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Util­i­sa­tion Act, 1974 — Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — was fur­ther amended by Act called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 2001 — 4. Amend­ment of Sec­tion 4.—In Sec­tion 4 of prin­ci­pal Act, in sub-section (2), after words “State Gov­ern­ment”, words “and will fix lease money at rate noti­fied by 22 State Gov­ern­ment from time to time — 5. Sub­sti­tu­tion of Sec­tion 5.– For Sec­tion 5 of prin­ci­pal Act, fol­low­ing shall be sub­sti­tuted, namely:- “5 — state­ment of objects and rea­sons for bring­ing about 2001 Amend­ment Act reads thus: State Gov­ern­ment appointed a Com­mit­tee to make a com­pre­hen­sive review of land laws of State, which exam­ined Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — expres­sion “com­mon pur­poses” is not defined in Sec­tion 2 — Sim­i­larly Sec­tion 5 pro­vides for deal­ing with encroach­ment on lands vested in State Gov­ern­ment under Sec­tion 3 of Act, but does not pro­vide for as to how encroach­ments on Sham­lat lands which have not vested in State Gov­ern­ment is to be removed — Sec­tions 2 and 3 of 2005 Act reads thus: 2. In sec­tion 3 of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974, after sub-section (2), fol­low­ing new sub-sections shall be added, namely:- “(2-a) land reverted back to co-sharers under clause (d) of sub-section (2 ) shall not be trans­ferred by such co-sharers, by way of sale, gift, mort­gage or oth­er­wise, dur­ing a period of twenty five years from date of muta­tion of such land — 3 — (1) Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Ordi­nance, 2005 is hereby repealed — State Gov­ern­ment had framed Rules called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Rules, 1975, here­inafter referred to as Rules — Rule 3 pro­vides for tak­ing pos­ses­sion of land and Rule 4 pro­vides mech­a­nism for muta­tion of land in favour of State Gov­ern­ment — detailed pro­ce­dure for demar­ca­tion of land under Sec­tion 8 has been pro­vided under Rule 6 — State Gov­ern­ment has also framed Rules called Himachal Pradesh Lease Rules, 1993 in exer­cise of pow­ers vested under Sec­tion 13 of of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 and under Sec­tion 26 of Himachal Pradesh Ceil­ing on Land Hold­ings Act, 1972 — eli­gi­bil­ity for grant of land on lease is pro­vided under Rule 6 — detailed pro­ce­dure for grant of land on lease com­mences 26 from Rule 10 to 23 — State has also framed a Scheme called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Scheme 1975 here­inafter referred to as ‘Scheme’ -

Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion — pro bono pub­lico — con­cept of — locus standi — Whether peti­tion­ers have nec­es­sary locus standi to file and main­tain writ peti­tion on their behalf and on behalf of co-villagers for return­ing their land on basis of inser­tion of clause (d) in sub­sec­tion (2) of sec­tion (3) of HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974? and Whether present writ peti­tion can be termed as pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion in view of con­sti­tu­tional issues raised for pro­tect­ing fun­da­men­tal rights of peti­tion­ers as well as rights of cov­il­lagers for restora­tion of their land on basis of amend­ment car­ried out in year 2001, which ear­lier stood vested in State in year 1974? — peti­tion­ers have filed peti­tion for pro­tec­tion of their con­sti­tu­tional as well as legal rights — Court is for­ti­fied in tak­ing this view in view of def­i­nite pro­nounce­ments of law by Supreme Court with regard to locus standi and main­tain­abil­ity of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — Their Lord­ships of Supreme Court have dis­cussed entire law with regard to fil­ing and main­tain­ing pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — Hon’ble Supreme Court after trac­ing his­tory and devel­op­ment of locus standi vis-a-vis pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion has held in SP Gupta Vs M. Tarkunde, JL Kalra, Iqbal M. Chagla, Rajappa, P. Sub­ra­ma­niam, DN Pandey Vs Pres­i­dent of India, AIR 1982 SC 149 as — “tra­di­tional rule in regard to locus standi is that judi­cial redress is avail­able only to a per­son who has suf­fered a legal injury by rea­son of vio­la­tion of his legal right or legal pro­tected inter­est by impugned action of State or a pub­lic author­ity or any other per­son or who is likely to suf­fer a legal injury by rea­son of threat­ened vio­la­tion of his legal right or legally pro­tected inter­est by any such action — This rule in regard to locus standi thus pos­tu­lates a right duty pat­tern which is com­monly to be found in pri­vate law lit­i­ga­tion — We have in such cases per­mit­ted a mem­ber of pub­lic to move Court for enforce­ment of con­sti­tu­tional or legal rights of such per­sons and judi­cial redress for legal wrong or legal injury caused to them — This Court treated let­ter as a writ peti­tion and per­mit­ted two law pro­fes­sors to main­tain an action for an appro­pri­ate writ for pur­pose of enforc­ing con­sti­tu­tional right of inmates of Pro­tec­tive Home and pro­vid­ing judi­cial redress to them — seek­ing judi­cial redress for legal wrong or injury caused to such per­son or deter­mi­nate class of per­sons — It is true that there are rules made by this Court pre­scrib­ing pro­ce­dure for mov­ing this Court for relief under Art — only way in which this can be done is by enter­tain­ing writ peti­tions and even let­ters from pub­lic spir­ited indi­vid­u­als seek­ing judi­cial redress for ben­e­fit of per­sons who have suf­fered a legal wrong or a legal injury or whose con­sti­tu­tional or legal right has been vio­lated but who by rea­son of their poverty or socially or eco­nom­i­cally dis­ad­van­taged posi­tion are unable to approach Court for relief — Can any mem­ber of pub­lic sue for judi­cial redress? If no one can main­tain an action for redress of such pub­lic wrong or pub­lic injury, it would be dis­as­trous for rule of law, for it would be open to State or a pub­lic author­ity to act with impunity beyond scope of its power or in breach of a pub­lic duty owed by it — view has there­fore been taken by Courts in many deci­sions that when­ever there is a pub­lic wrong or pub­lic injury caused by an act or omis­sion of State or a pub­lic author­ity which is con­trary to Con­sti­tu­tion or law, any mem­ber of pub­lic act­ing bonafide and hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for redres­sal of such pub­lic wrong or pub­lic injury — It is absolutely essen­tial that rule of law must wean peo­ple away from law­less street and win them for court of law — Indi­vid­ual rights and duties are giv­ing place to meta-individual, col­lec­tive, social rights and duties of classes or groups of per­sons — What results in such cases is pub­lic injury and it is one of char­ac­ter­is­tics of pub­lic injury that act or acts com­plained of can­not nec­es­sar­ily be shown to affect rights of deter­mi­nate or iden­ti­fi­able class or group of per­sons: pub­lic injury is an injury to an inde­ter­mi­nate class of per­sons — prin­ci­ple under­ly­ing tra­di­tional rule of stand­ing is that only holder of right can sue and it is there­fore, held in many juris­dic­tions that since State rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic is holder of pub­lic rights, it alone can sue for redress of pub­lic injury or vin­di­ca­tion of pub­lic inter­est — Attorney-General rep­re­sents pub­lic inter­est in its entirety and as pointed out by SA de Smith in “Judi­cial review of Admin­is­tra­tive Action” (Third edi­tion) at page 403; “gen­eral pub­lic has an inter­est in see­ing that law is obeyed and for this pur­pose, Attor­ney Gen­eral rep­re­sents pub­lic.” There is, there­fore, a machin­ery in United King­dom for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury and pro­tec­tion of social, col­lec­tive, what Cap­pel­letti calls ‘dif­fuse’ rights and inter­ests — If pub­lic duties are to be enforced and social col­lec­tive ‘dif­fused’ rights and inter­ests are to be pro­tected, we have to uti­lize ini­tia­tive and zeal of public-minded per­sons and organ­i­sa­tions by allow­ing them to move court and act for a gen­eral or group inter­est, even though, they may not be directly injured in their own rights — It is for this rea­son that in pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion – lit­i­ga­tion under­taken for pur­pose of redress­ing pub­lic injury, enforc­ing pub­lic duty, pro­tect­ing social, col­lec­tive, ‘dif­fused’ rights and inter­ests or vin­di­cat­ing pub­lic inter­est, any cit­i­zen who is act­ing bona fide and who has suf­fi­cient inter­est has to be accorded stand­ing — What is suf­fi­cient inter­est to give stand­ing to a mem­ber of pub­lic would have to be deter­mined by Court in each indi­vid­ual case — Mc. Whirter case and three well known Black­burn cases clearly estab­lish that any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for enforc­ing a pub­lic duty against a statu­tory or pub­lic author­ity — If a gov­ern­ment depart­ment or a pub­lic author­ity trans­gresses law laid down by Par­lia­ment, or threat­ens to trans­gress it, can a mem­ber of pub­lic come to Court and draw mat­ter to its atten­tion… — We would, there­fore, hold that any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury aris­ing from breach of pub­lic duty or from vio­la­tion of some pro­vi­sion of Con­sti­tu­tion or law and seek enforce­ment of such pub­lic duty and obser­vance of such con­sti­tu­tional or legal pro­vi­sion — A fear is some­times expressed that if we keep door wide open for any mem­ber of pub­lic to enter por­tals of Court to enforce pub­lic 46 duty or to vin­di­cate pub­lic inter­est, Court will be flooded with lit­i­ga­tion — Right to live is a fun­da­men­tal right under Art — A peti­tion under Art — Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion can­not be invoked by a per­son or body of per­sons to sat­isfy his or its per­sonal grudge and enmity — If such peti­tions under Arti­cle 32, are enter­tained it would amount to abuse of process of Court, pre­vent­ing speedy rem­edy to other gen­uine peti­tion­ers from this Court — Per­sonal inter­est can­not be enforced through process of this Court under Art. 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion in garb of a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion con­tem­plates legal pro­ceed­ing for vin­di­ca­tion or enforce­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights of a group of per­sons or com­mu­nity which are not able to enforce their fun­da­men­tal rights on account of their inca­pac­ity, poverty or igno­rance of law — A per­son invok­ing juris­dic­tion of this Court under Art — golden key for pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion was deliv­ered in land mark deci­sion of this Court in, SP Gupta’s case, 1981 (Suppl) SCC 87 : (AIR 1982 SC 149) — It is in this con­text above obser­va­tions were made by the Court as relied by appel­lants but that very author­ity accords approval for fil­ing such pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — After hav­ing elab­o­rately explained con­cept of PIL, learned Judge held that: (SCC p — 218, para 23) “… any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury aris­ing from breach of pub­lic duty or from vio­la­tion of some pro­vi­sion of Con­sti­tu­tion or law and seek enforce­ment of such pub­lic duty and obser­vance of such con­sti­tu­tional or legal pro­vi­sion — true nature of peti­tion, there­fore, was that of a peti­tion filed in pub­lic inter­est — While enter­tain­ing a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, this Court in exer­cise of its juris­dic­tion under Art — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India and High Courts under Art — rule of locus has been relaxed by Courts for such pur­poses with a view to enable a cit­i­zen of India to approach Courts to vin­di­cate legal injury or legal wrong caused to a sec­tion of peo­ple by way of vio­la­tion of any statu­tory or con­sti­tu­tional right.” A ques­tion involv­ing proper inter­pre­ta­tion as regard statu­tory pro­vi­sions con­fer­ring a statu­tory right on a statu­tory author­ity vis-a-vis a statu­tory duty on part of Com­mis­sioner could be gone into by High Court even in a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion.” Hon’ble Apex Court has held in Dit­taraj Nathuji Thaware ver­sus State of Maha­rash­tra and Oth­ers, (2005) 1 SCC 590 that a per­son act­ing bona fide and 57 hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est in pro­ceed­ings of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion will alone have a locus standi and can approach Court to wipe out vio­la­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights and gen­uine infrac­tion of statu­tory pro­vi­sion, but nor for per­sonal gain or pri­vate profit or polit­i­cal motive or any oblique con­sid­er­a­tion — entire con­cept of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, class lit­i­ga­tion and social action lit­i­ga­tion has been suc­cinctly dealt with by Supreme Court in cases: Hon’ble Apex Court has held in Fer­tililzer Cor­po­ra­tion Kam­a­gar Union (Regd.) Sin­dri Vs Union of India, AIR 1981 SC 344 that pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion is part of process of par­tic­i­pate jus­tice and “stand­ing” in civil lit­i­ga­tion of that pat­tern must have lib­eral recep­tion at judi­cial door steps — If pub­lic prop­erty is dis­si­pated, it would require a strong argu­ment to con­vince Court that rep­re­sen­ta­tive seg­ments of pub­lic or at least a sec­tion of pub­lic which is directly inter­ested and affected would have no right to com­plain of infrac­tion of pub­lic duties and oblig­a­tions — Cap­pel­letti is right in his stress on impor­tance of access: ” right of effec­tive access to jus­tice has emerged with new social rights — Right to be Heard” — Class-actions will activise legal process where indi­vid­u­als can­not approach court for many rea­sons — I quote from Dis­cus­sion Paper No — 4: [Law Reform Com­mis­sion, Dis­cus­sion Paper No. 4 — Access to Court –1, Stand­ing: Pub­lic Inter­est Suits, p — 4.] 61 ‘Widened stand­ing rules may — A Fed­eral class action law — - — - [Prof. KE Scott : “Stand­ing in Supreme Court : A Func­tional Analy­sis” (1973) 86.] of locus standi to com­mu­nity ori­en­ta­tion of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, these issues must be con­sid­ered — Why drive com­mon peo­ple to pub­lic inter­est action? After all Aus­tralian, 16 Novem­ber, 1977 was right — Court is thus merely assist­ing in real­i­sa­tion of con­sti­tu­tional objec­tives — Hon’ble Apex Court in Janta Dal Vs HS Chowd­hary and Oth­ers, AIR 1993 SC 892 has explained expres­sion pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion to mean legal action ini­ti­ated for enforce­ment of pub­lic or gen­eral inter­est — Their Lord­ships have held as under:- “ expres­sion ‘lit­i­ga­tion’ means a legal action includ­ing all pro­ceed­ings therein, ini­ti­ated in a Court of Law with pur­pose of 65 enforc­ing a right or seek­ing a rem­edy — There­fore, lex­i­cally expres­sion ‘PIL’ means a legal action ini­ti­ated in a Court of Law for enforce­ment of pub­lic inter­est or gen­eral inter­est in which pub­lic or a class of com­mu­nity have pecu­niary inter­est or some inter­est by which their legal rights or lia­bil­i­ties are affected — 32 seek­ing judi­cial redress for legal wrong or injury caused to such per­son or deter­mi­nate class of per­sons .….. — - — - It is true that there are rules made by this Court pre­scrib­ing pro­ce­dure for mov­ing this Court for relief under Arti­cle 32 and they require var­i­ous for­mal­i­ties to be gone through by a per­son seek­ing to approach this Court — After hav­ing elab­o­rately explained con­cept of PIL, learned Judge held that : “.….…..any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury aris­ing from breach of pub­lic duty or from vio­la­tion of some pro­vi­sion of Con­sti­tu­tion or law and seek enforce­ment of such pub­lic duty and obser­vance of such con­sti­tu­tional or legal pro­vi­sion — Hon’ble Apex Court has held in Gau­rav Jain ver­sus Union of India and Oth­ers, (1997) 8 SCC 114 that pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion is not adver­sar­ial and it is one of col­lab­o­ra­tion and coop­er­a­tion between State and Court — It is one of col­lab­o­ra­tion and coop­er­a­tion between 68 State and Court — Hon’ble Supreme Court has reit­er­ated para­me­ters with regard to fil­ing and main­tain­abil­ity of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion in BALCO Employ­ees Union (Regd.) v — Union of India and Oth­ers, AIR 2002 SC 350 as under:- “Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, or PIL as it is more com­monly known, entered Indian judi­cial process in 1970 — Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion was intended to mean noth­ing more than what words them­selves said viz., ‘lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of pub­lic’ — In those cases also, it is legal rights which are secured by courts — Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Mohd — Hon’ble Supreme Court in Guru­vay­oor Devas­wom Man­ag­ing Com­mit­tee and Another ver­sus CK Rajan and Oth­ers, (2003) 7 SCC 546 has sum­marised prin­ci­ples evolved by Hon’ble Supreme Court in rela­tion to Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion as under:- “ prin­ci­ples evolved by this Court in this behalf may be suit­ably sum­ma­rized as under : (i) Court in exer­cise of pow­ers under Art — Court is con­sti­tu­tion­ally bound to pro­tect fun­da­men­tal rights of such dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple so as to direct State to ful­fill its con­sti­tu­tional promises — (ii) Issue of pub­lic impor­tance, enforce­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights of large num­ber of pub­lic vis-a– vis con­sti­tu­tional duties and func­tions of State, if raised, Court treat a let­ter or a telegram as a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion upon relax­ing pro­ce­dural laws as also law relat­ing to plead­ings — (viii) How­ever, in an appro­pri­ate case, although peti­tioner might have moved a Court in his pri­vate inter­est and for redres­sal of per­sonal griev­ances, Court in fur­ther­ance of pub­lic inter­est may treat it nec­es­sary to enquire into state of affairs of sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of jus­tice — In Sachi­danand Pandey and another v — State of West Ben­gal and oth­ers ((1987) 2 SCC 295), this Court held : “61 — It is nec­es­sary to have some self-imposed restraint on pub­lic inter­est lit­i­gants.” Court will not ordi­nar­ily trans­gress into a pol­icy — Court has come down heav­ily when­ever exec­u­tive has sought to impinge upon Court’s juris­dic­tion.” (xi) Ordi­nar­ily High Court should not enter­tain a writ peti­tion by way of Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion ques­tion­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity or valid­ity of a statute or a Statu­tory Rule — 142 was con­sid­ered in sev­eral deci­sions and recently in Supreme Court Bar Asso­ci­a­tion v — Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409 by which deci­sion of this Court in Vinay Chan­dra Mishra, Re (1995) 2 SCC 584 was partly over­ruled, it was held that ple­nary pow­ers of this Court under Art — 142 of Con­sti­tu­tion are inher­ent in Court and are “COMPLEMENTARY” to those pow­ers which are specif­i­cally con­ferred on Court by var­i­ous statutes — Court fur­ther observed that though pow­ers con­ferred on Court by Art — Court fur­ther observed that this power can­not be used to “sup­plant” sub­stan­tive law applic­a­ble to case or cause under con­sid­er­a­tion of Court — (See also Supreme Court Bar Asso­ci­a­tion v — Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409) — 76 This Court in Balco Employ­ees Union (Regd.) (supra) suc­cinctly opined: “Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, or PIL as it is more com­monly known, entered Indian judi­cial process in 1970 — Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion was intended to mean noth­ing more than what words them­selves said viz — “lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of pub­lic.” Inci­den­tally, on admin­is­tra­tive side of this Court, cer­tain guide­lines have been issued to be fol­lowed for enter­tain­ing Letters/ Peti­tions received by this Court as Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion — Hon’ble Apex Court has explained nature and scope of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion in Ashok Kumar Pandey ver­sus State of WB, (2004) 3 SCC 349 as under:- “It is nec­es­sary to take note of mean­ing of expres­sion ‘pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion’ — In Strouds Judi­cial Dic­tio­nary, Vol­ume 4 (IV Edi­tion), ‘Pub­lic Inter­est’ is defined thus: “Pub­lic Inter­est (1) a mat­ter of pub­lic or gen­eral inter­est does not mean that which is inter­est­ing as grat­i­fy­ing curios­ity or a love of infor­ma­tion or amuse­ment but that in which a class of com­mu­nity have a pecu­niary inter­est, or some inter­est by which their legal rights or lia­bil­i­ties are affected.” In Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary (Sixth Edi­tion), “pub­lic inter­est” is defined as fol­lows : “Pub­lic Inter­est some­thing in which pub­lic, or some inter­est by which their legal rights or lia­bil­i­ties are affected — Inter­est shared by national gov­ern­ment.…” As indi­cated above, Court must be care­ful to see that a body of per­sons or mem­ber of pub­lic, who approaches court is act­ing bona fide and not for per­sonal gain or pri­vate motive or polit­i­cal moti­va­tion or other oblique con­sid­er­a­tion — Court must not allow its process to be abused for oblique con­sid­er­a­tions — Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Indian Banks’ Asso­ci­a­tion, Bom­bay and Oth­ers ver­sus Devkala Con­sul­tancy Ser­vice and Oth­ers, (2004) 11 SCC 1 that in an appro­pri­ate case, whether peti­tioner might have moved a Court in his pri­vate inter­est and for redres­sal of his per­sonal griev­ance, Court in fur­ther­ance of pub­lic inter­est may treat it a neces­sity to enquire into state of affairs of sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of jus­tice — Hon’ble Supreme Court has fur­ther has fur­ther held that a pri­vate inter­est case can also be treated as pub­lic inter­est case — While enter­tain­ing a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, this Court in exer­cise of its juris­dic­tion under Art — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India and High Courts under Art — rule of locus has been relaxed by Courts for such pur­poses with a view to enable a cit­i­zen of India to approach Courts to vin­di­cate legal injury or legal wrong caused to 80 a sec­tion of peo­ple by way of vio­la­tion of any statu­tory or con­sti­tu­tional right.” peti­tion raises ques­tions of great con­sti­tu­tional and pub­lic impor­tance and are required to be gone into by this Court being pro­tec­tor of con­sti­tu­tional and legal rights of cit­i­zens of India -

Delay and laches — posi­tion when objec­tion not taken in plead­ings — Whether present writ peti­tion suf­fers from vice of delay and laches and neg­li­gence on part of peti­tion­ers? — State has not taken objec­tion with regard to delay and laches — Hon’ble Supreme Court has enu­mer­ated law with regard to delay and laches in fol­low­ing pro­nounce­ments: Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Ram­chan­dra Shankar Deod­har and oth­ers v — State of Maha­rash­tra and oth­ers, (1974)1 SCC 317 that for enforce­ment and pro­tec­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights relief can­not be refused solely on ground of laches, delay or like — Their Lord­ships have held as under: “ first pre­lim­i­nary objec­tion raised on behalf of respon­dents was that peti­tion­ers were guilty of gross laches and delay in fil­ing peti­tion — It was only when peti­tion in Kapoor’s case was decided by Bom­bay High Court that peti­tion­ers came to know that it was case of State Gov­ern­ment in that peti­tion — and that case was accepted by Bom­bay High Court — that Rules of 30^th July, 1959 were uni­fied rules of recruit­ment to posts of Deputy 83 Col­lec­tor applic­a­ble through­out reor­gan­ised State of Bom­bay — peti­tion­ers there­after did not lose any time in fil­ing present peti­tion — It may also be noted that prin­ci­ple on which Court pro­ceeds in refus­ing relief to peti­tioner on ground of laches or delay is that rights which have accrued to oth­ers by rea­son of delay in fil­ing peti­tion should not be allowed to be dis­turbed unless there is rea­son­able expla­na­tion for delay — This prin­ci­ple was stated in fol­low­ing terms by Hiday­at­ul­lah, CJ, in (1969 2 SCR 824 = (AIR 1970 SC 898): ” party claim­ing Fun­da­men­tal Rights must move Court before other rights come into exis­tence — action of courts can­not harm inno­cent par­ties if their rights emerge by rea­son of delay on part of per­son mov­ing Court.” No rights have, there­fore, accrued in favour of oth­ers by rea­son of delay in fil­ing peti­tion — There is a basic and fun­da­men­tal dis­tinc­tion recog­nised by law between req­ui­si­tion and acqui­si­tion — 31 clause (2) of Con­sti­tu­tion also recog­nised this dis­tinc­tion between com­pul­sory acqui­si­tion and req­ui­si­tion­ing of prop­erty — Vide : Obser­va­tions of Mukher­jee, J. in Charanjitlal’s case 1950 SCR 869 : (AIR 1951 SC 41) — If gov­ern­ment wants to take over prop­erty for an indef­i­nite period of time, gov­ern­ment must acquire prop­erty but it can­not use power of req­ui­si­tion for achiev­ing that object — power of req­ui­si­tion is exer­cis­able by gov­ern­ment only for a pub­lic pur­pose which is of a tran­si­tory char­ac­ter — It is true that peti­tion­ers have come to court some­what belat­edly — There has there­fore been delay on part of peti­tion­ers in com­ing to Court — real test to deter­mine delay in such cases is that peti­tioner should come to writ Court before a par­al­lel right is cre­ated and that lapse of time is not attrib­ut­able to any laches or negligence -

Fun­da­men­tal Rights — waiver of or estop­ple against — when can be dis­cerned — Whether respon­dents No. 4 to 329 could waive or barter away their fun­da­men­tal rights after pass­ing of 2001 Act? — Whether respon­dents No.4 to 329 could waive or barter away their fun­da­men­tal rights after pass­ing of 2001 Act? — There can be no estop­pel against Con­sti­tu­tion — This prin­ci­ple can have no appli­ca­tion to rep­re­sen­ta­tions made regard­ing asser­tion or enforce­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights — Fun­da­men­tal rights are undoubt­edly con­ferred by Con­sti­tu­tion upon indi­vid­u­als which have to be asserted and enforced by them, if those rights are vio­lated — of Income-tax, Delhi, (1959) Supp (1) SCR 528 : (AIR 1959 SC 149), a Con­sti­tu­tion Bench of this Court con­sid­ered ques­tion whether fun­da­men­tal rights con­ferred by Con­sti­tu­tion can be waived — Sim­i­larly Apex Court has held in Nar Singh Pal v — Union of India and oth­ers, (2000)3 SCC 588 that fun­da­men­tal rights can­not be waived nor there can be any estop­pel against exer­cise of fun­da­men­tal rights — Fun­da­men­tal Rights under Con­sti­tu­tion can­not be bartered away — They can­not be com­pro­mised nor can there be any estop­pel against exer­cise of Fun­da­men­tal Rights avail­able under Constitution -

Effect of Amend­ment of leg­is­la­tion — What is effect of amend­ment car­ried out by way of Act No. 18 of 1981 in Prin­ci­pal Act by adding sec­tion 8-A? — That Act con­tain­ing deem­ing pro­vi­sions in Sec­tion 1(2) is deemed to have come into force on date on which Act 22 of 1981 came into force i.e., on Sep­tem­ber 5, 1981 when that Act was noti­fied in Orissa Gazette — new pro­vi­sions are thus, in absence of any incon­sis­tency or absur­dity, deemed to have always formed part of pro­vi­sions orig­i­nally enacted — That being posi­tion in law, as an inevitable corol­lary, noti­fi­ca­tion issued under Sec­tion 1(3) is deemed to be applic­a­ble to prin­ci­pal Act with sub­se­quently sub­sti­tuted retroac­tive pro­vi­sions writ­ten into it; and, no fur­ther noti­fi­ca­tion 94 under Sec­tion 1(3) in respect of Act 4 of 1989 is, there­fore, required

Prin­ci­ple of read­ing down of statute — Whether Court can read down sec­tion 8-A to avoid strik­ing it down, if it is found viola­tive of Arti­cles 14 and 19 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India? — Whether HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 is an agrar­ian piece of leg­is­la­tion and whether grant­ing lease for min­ing pur­poses falls out side scope of agrar­ian reform and thus not enti­tled to pro­tec­tion of Arti­cle 31-A of Con­sti­tu­tion of India? — It was to achieve this object that it was con­sid­ered proper to vest sham­lat land in State Gov­ern­ment for its proper man­age­ment and uti­liza­tion — Himachal Pradesh Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly passed Himachal Pradesh Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 on 11.4.1974 — Sec­tion 2 of Prin­ci­pal Act 18 of 1974 defines expres­sion “inhab­i­tant of an estate,” land­less per­son” means a per­son who is hold­ing no land for agri­cul­tural pur­poses, whether as an owner or a ten­ant, earns his liveli­hood prin­ci­pally by man­ual labour on land and intends to take pro­fes­sion of agri­cul­ture and is capa­ble of cul­ti­vat­ing land per­son­ally — Clause (h) of Sec­tion 2 defines word “land” and “pri­vate forests” to have same mean­ings as assigned to these expres­sions in HP — Ceil­ing on Land Hold­ings Act, 1972 — State has framed Rules called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Rules 1975 — per­cent­age of land to be reserved for graz­ing and com­mon pur­poses is to be fixed in con­sul­ta­tion with estate right holder keep­ing in view pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 8 — State Gov­ern­ment had framed Scheme called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Scheme, 1975 — detailed pro­ce­dure for prepa­ra­tion of state­ment of land avail­able for allot­ment and pro­ce­dure for allot­ment of land from allotable pool has been pro­vided under paras 4 and 5 — State has also framed Himachal Pradesh .Lease Rules, 1993 in exer­cise of pow­ers vested under Sec­tion 13 of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 and under Sec­tion 26 of Himachal Pradesh Ceil­ing on Land Hold­ings Act, 1972 — Rule 6 pro­vides eli­gi­bil­ity for grant of land on lease — It is evi­dent from objects and rea­sons, read­ing of entire Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 and Rules framed there­un­der, Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands, Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Scheme, 1975 as well as Lease Rules, 1993 as amended from time to time that Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 is a piece of Agrar­ian Leg­is­la­tion — land which had vested in State has been divided into two parts — expres­sion ‘other eli­gi­ble per­son’ has been added by Sec­tion 2 of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1987 — amend­ment has been car­ried out in Prin­ci­pal Act of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 by 98 way of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1981 whereby Sec­tion 8-A has been inserted in Prin­ci­pal Act, namely, Sec­tion 8-A to fol­low­ing effects: “8-A — Util­i­sa­tion of land for devel­op­ment of State:- Notwith­stand­ing any­thing con­tained in Sec­tion 8 of Act, State Gov­ern­ment may uti­lize any area of land vested in it under Act by lease to any per­son or by trans­fer to any Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment in inter­ests of devel­op­ment of State, if State Gov­ern­ment is sat­is­fied that there are suf­fi­cient rea­sons to do so sub­ject to con­di­tion that land for pur­poses men­tioned in clause (a) of sub-section (1) of sec­tion 8 in no case shall be less than fifty present of land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Act — basic under­lined prin­ci­ple for enact­ment of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands vest­ing & Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974 is to uplift per­sons liv­ing in vil­lages by reserv­ing cer­tain por­tion of land for graz­ing and other com­mon pur­poses and remain­ing land for allot­ment to land­less and other eli­gi­ble per­sons — Sec­tion 3℗ defines expres­sion “tobacco prod­ucts” as prod­ucts spec­i­fied in Sched­ule — If agrar­ian reforms are to suc­ceed, mere dis­tri­b­u­tion of land to land­less is not enough — Jus­tice Mathew has made these obser­va­tions while inter­pret­ing sec­tion 96 of Agrar­ian Reforms Act (1 of 1964): “Sec­tion 96 of Act says that Land Board shall after reserv­ing in each vil­lage lands nec­es­sary for pub­lic pur­poses, assign on reg­istry remain­ing Lands vested in Gov­ern­ment under sec­tion 86 or 87, as spec­i­fied in sec­tion — It was argued that reser­va­tion of land for pub­lic pur­pose has no rela­tion to agrar­ian reform, but is a colourable device for acquir­ing prop­erty for pub­lic pur­poses not relat­ing to agrar­ian reform with­out pay­ing com­pen­sa­tion as pro­vided under Arti­cle 31 (2) — But if pro­vi­sion is read as pro­vid­ing for reser­va­tion of land for pub­lic pur­poses in rela­tion to agrar­ian reform, it would be immune from attack — AIR 1972 SC 2027 has upheld judg­ment of Ker­ala High Court — In accor­dance with well rec­og­nized canon of con­struc­tion adopted in a num­ber of cases decided by this Court we read sub sec­tion to mean only reser­va­tion of land for such pub­lic pur­poses as would bring about agrar­ian reform inas­much as any acqui­si­tion under Art — 31-A for any pub­lic pur­pose other than that falling under expres­sion “agrar­ian reform” can­not be con­sid­ered as hav­ing pro­tec­tion of that Arti­cle.” Kan­nan Devan Hills (Resump­tion of Lands) Act 5 of 1971 dis­closed a scheme in Sec­tion 9 which is very sim­i­lar to our own Sec­tion 10 of impugned Act — That scheme as envis­aged in this sec­tion was upheld by this court a scheme for agrar­ian reform and we do not see any good rea­son why we should take a dif­fer­ent view with regard to scheme envis­aged in sec­tion 10 of impugned Act — “con­cept of agrar­ian reform is a com­plex and dynamic one pro­mot­ing wider inter­ests than con­ven­tional reor­ga­ni­za­tion of land sys­tem or dis­tri­b­u­tion of land — Arti­cle 31A itself defines expres­sion ‘estate’ in clause (2) — pre­dom­i­nant pur­pose of sub-clause (d) of clause (2) of Arti­cle 323B is to con­sti­tute a tri­bunal only with respect to dis­putes per­tain­ing to laws car­ry­ing out agrar­ian reforms — Out of 5 spec­i­fied Acts, West Ben­gal Land Reforms Act, 1955, Cal­cutta Thika Ten­ancy (Acqui­si­tion and Reg­u­la­tion) Act, 1981 and West Ben­gal Land Hold­ing Rev­enue Act, 1979 have no con­nec­tion what­so­ever with agrar­ian reforms — con­cept of agrar­ian reform is a com­plex and dynamic one pro­mot­ing wider inter­ests than con­ven­tional reor­ga­ni­za­tion of land sys­tem or dis­tri­b­u­tion of land — Under clause (1) State Leg­is­la­ture is empow­ered to make a law with regard to entry 18 in List II of 7^th Sched­ule which reads “Land, that is to say, right in or over land, land tenures includ­ing rela­tion of land­lord and ten­ant, and col­lec­tion of rents; trans­fer and alien­ation of agri­cul­tural land; land improve­ment and agri­cul­tural loans, col­o­niza­tion” — State Gov­ern­ment had issued noti­fi­ca­tion on 8^th Decem­ber, 1986 — Clause (a) of sub-section (1) of Sec­tion 8 of Prin­ci­pal Act reads as under: “an area not less than 50% of total area vested in State Gov­ern­ment under sec­tion 3 of Act for graz­ing and other com­mon pur­poses of inhab­i­tants of an estate.” “other eli­gi­ble per­sons” — Among sources from which land was and is being allot­ted to both cat­e­gories, is vil­lage com­mon land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — Then there may be other pur­poses also for which land is often required — It is clear from com­bined read­ing of both expres­sion as defined under sec­tion 2 © (dd) that land was to be allot­ted to agri­cul­tural labourer, who had no land or had land less 118 than an acre — 121 In view of law laid down by Hon’ble Supreme Court and after har­mon­is­ing Sec­tion 8-A of Amend­ment Act, 1981, and other sec­tions of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Rules, 1975 , Himachal Pradesh Lease Rules, 1993 and Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Scheme, 1975, we read down Sec­tion 8-A instead of strik­ing it down by declar­ing that min­ing activities/operations etc., can­not be termed as devel­op­men­tal activ­i­ties as men­tioned in sec­tion 8-A and action of State to grant lease to respon­dent No.3 from allotable pool is con­trary to Prin­ci­pal Act — Sec­tion 8-A will not get immu­nity under Arti­cle 31-A if devel­op­men­tal activ­i­ties car­ried out by State are against agrar­ian reforms

Immu­nity of Act — Whether immu­nity enjoyed by Prin­ci­pal Act being placed in Schedule-IX can be extended to sec­tion 8-A added in year 1981? — Any amend­ment of an Act in Schedule-IX must, there­fore, stand test of fun­da­men­tal rights unless it is oth­er­wise pro­tected, for exam­ple Arti­cle 31-A — amend­ing Act passed after enact­ment of Con­sti­tu­tion (Sev­en­teenth Amend­ment) Act, 1964 does not there­fore qual­ify for pro­tec­tion of Arti­cle 31-B — 31C as it stood prior to its amend­ment by forty sec­ond amend­ment, chal­lenge to valid­ity of rel­e­vant Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ment by which that Act 126 or Reg­u­la­tion is put in Ninth Sched­ule on ground that amend­ment dam­ages or destroys a basic or essen­tial fea­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion or its basic struc­ture as reflected in Art — var­i­ous con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments by which addi­tions were made to Ninth Sched­ule on or after April 24, 1973 will be valid only if they do not dam­age or destroy basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion” — 14, 19, and 31 can be included in Ninth Sched­ule or whether it is only a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment amend­ing Ninth Sched­ule that dam­ages or destroys basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion that can be struck down — It had been inserted into Ninth Sched­ule by Con­sti­tu­tion (For­ti­eth Amend­ment) Act — Sec­tion 27(1) read thus : “27 (1) — This gave rise to argu­ment that fun­da­men­tal rights chap­ter is not part of basic struc­ture — Jus­tice Khanna did not want to ele­vate right to prop­erty under Arti­cle 19(1)(f) to level and sta­tus of basic struc­ture or basic frame-work of Con­sti­tu­tion, that explains ratio of Kesa­vananda Bharati’s case — Fun­da­men­tal Rights and Direc­tive Prin­ci­ples have to be bal­anced — Fun­da­men­tal rights enshrined in Part III were added to Con­sti­tu­tion as a check on State power, par­tic­u­larly leg­isla­tive power — Under Arti­cle 32, which is also part of Part III, Supreme Court has been vested with power to ensure com­pli­ance of Part III — Par­lia­ment has power to amend pro­vi­sions of Part III so as to abridge or take away fun­da­men­tal rights, but that power is sub­ject to lim­i­ta­tion of basic struc­ture doc­trine — After enun­ci­a­tion of basic struc­ture doc­trine, full judi­cial review is an inte­gral part of con­sti­tu­tional scheme — opin­ion of Jus­tice Khanna in Indira Gandhi clearly indi­cates that view in Kesa­vananda Bharati’s case is that at least some fun­da­men­tal rights do form part of basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion — Detailed dis­cus­sion in Kesa­vananda Bharati’s case to demon­strate that right to prop­erty was not part of basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion by itself shows that some of fun­da­men­tal rights are part of basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion — Judi­cial Review is an essen­tial fea­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion — It gives prac­ti­cal con­tent to objec­tives of Con­sti­tu­tion embod­ied in Part III and other parts of Con­sti­tu­tion — Every amend­ment to Con­sti­tu­tion whether it be in form of amend­ment of any Arti­cle or amend­ment by inser­tion of an Act in Ninth Sched­ule has to be tested by ref­er­ence to doc­trine of basic struc­ture which includes ref­er­ence to Arti­cle 21 read with Arti­cle 14, Arti­cle 15 etc — basic struc­ture doc­trine requires State to 134 jus­tify degree of inva­sion of fun­da­men­tal rights — broader con­tours of judi­cial review and doc­trine of basic struc­ture: (i) A law that abro­gates or abridges rights guar­an­teed by Part III of Con­sti­tu­tion may vio­late basic struc­ture doc­trine or it may not — If for­mer is con­se­quence of law, whether by amend­ment of any Arti­cle of Part III or by an inser­tion in Ninth Sched­ule, such law will have to be inval­i­dated in exer­cise of judi­cial review power of Court — (iii) All amend­ments to Con­sti­tu­tion made on or after 24^th April, 1973 by which Ninth Sched­ule is amended by inclu­sion of var­i­ous laws therein shall have to be tested on touch­stone of basic or essen­tial fea­tures of Con­sti­tu­tion as reflected in 135 Arti­cle 21 read with Arti­cle 14, Arti­cle 19, and prin­ci­ples under­ly­ing them — (iv) Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for con­fer­ring pro­tec­tion, not blan­ket pro­tec­tion, on laws included in Ninth Sched­ule by Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ments shall be a mat­ter of Con­sti­tu­tional adju­di­ca­tion by exam­in­ing nature and extent of infrac­tion of a Fun­da­men­tal Right by a statute, sought to be Con­sti­tu­tion­ally pro­tected, and on touch­stone of basic struc­ture doc­trine as reflected in Arti­cle 21 read with Arti­cle 14 and Arti­cle 19 by appli­ca­tion of “rights test” and “essence of right” test tak­ing syn­op­tic view of Arti­cles in Part III as held in Indira Gandhi’s case — Apply­ing above tests to Ninth Sched­ule laws, if infrac­tion affects basic struc­ture then such a law(s) will not get pro­tec­tion of Ninth Sched­ule — Sec­tion 8-A could only enjoy immu­nity under Schedule-IX if same had been placed by 136 way of amend­ment car­ried out in Con­sti­tu­tion as per Arti­cle 368 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India in IXth Sched­ule — vires of sec­tion 8-A can be chal­lenged by peti­tion­ers under Arti­cles 14 and 19 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India since sec­tion 8-A does not enjoy pro­tec­tion under Arti­cle 31-A of Con­sti­tu­tion of India -

Whether sec­tion 8-A could be inserted in year 1981 in Prin­ci­pal Act by invok­ing sec­tion 14 of Act? — Could sec­tion 8-A be incor­po­rated in HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 on strength of sec­tion 14 of Prin­ci­pal Act? Sec­tion 14 of HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 reads thus: “Power to remove dif­fi­cul­ties.- If any dif­fi­culty arises in giv­ing effect to pro­vi­sions of this Act, State Gov­ern­ment, may, by order pub­lished in Offi­cial Gazette, make such pro­vi­sions or give such direc­tions not incon­sis­tent with pro­vi­sions of this Act, as may appear to it to be nec­es­sary or expe­di­ent for removal of dif­fi­culty.” sec­tion autho­rizes Gov­ern­ment to deter­mine for itself what pur­poses of Act are and to make pro­vi­sions for removal of doubts or dif­fi­cul­ties — If in giv­ing effect to pro­vi­sions of Act any doubt or dif­fi­culty arises, nor­mally it is for Leg­is­la­ture to remove that doubt or dif­fi­culty — Sub sec­tion (2) of sec­tion 37 pur­ports to make order of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in such cases final accen­tu­ates vice in sub sec­tion (1) since by enact­ing that pro­vi­sion Gov­ern­ment is made sole judge whether dif­fi­culty or doubt had arisen in giv­ing effect to pro­vi­sions of Act, whether it is nec­es­sary or expe­di­ent to remove doubt or dif­fi­culty, and whether pro­vi­sion enacted is not incon­sis­tent with pur­poses of Act.” 138 Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Straw Prod­ucts Lim­ited ver­sus Income Tax Offi­cer, Bhopal, AIR 1968 SC 579 that sec­tion did not make aris­ing of dif­fi­culty a mat­ter of sub­jec­tive sat­is­fac­tion of Gov­ern­ment — Exer­cise of power to make pro­vi­sions or to issue direc­tions as may appear nec­es­sary to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is con­di­tioned by exis­tence of a dif­fi­culty aris­ing in giv­ing effect to pro­vi­sions of any Act, rule or order — sec­tion did not make aris­ing of dif­fi­culty a mat­ter of sub­jec­tive sat­is­fac­tion of Gov­ern­ment — dif­fi­culty must arise in giv­ing effect to pro­vi­sions of Par­ent Act and not dif­fi­culty aris­ing ali­unde, or an extra­ne­ous dif­fi­culty — Courts and tri­bunals cre­ated by law must guide them­selves by direc­tions and prin­ci­ples embod­ied in law — 143 Some­times law sets pace and pub­lic opin­ion catches up with law — There is nei­ther any delay nor neg­li­gence on part of peti­tion­ers to approach this Court for chal­leng­ing vires of Sec­tion 8-A of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974; 4 — Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974 is an agrar­ian piece of leg­is­la­tion; 7 — Sec­tion 14 of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974 could not be invoked by State for adding Sec­tion 8-A Con­se­quently, writ peti­tion is allowed -

HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — As per pro­vi­sion of Act, 5614.04 bighas of vil­lage com­mon land owned by peti­tion­ers with other co-owners assessed to land rev­enue got vested in State of Himachal Pradesh — Con­se­quently land vested in State was required to be returned to orig­i­nal own­ers — State returned pro­pri­etary rights of Vil­lage com­mon land mea­sur­ing 4276.01 bighas to own­ers vide a Muta­tions No — 1145 dated 21.5.2004 and 1157 dated 29.9.2004 — It is stated in reply that peti­tion­ers were not enti­tled to any com­pen­sa­tion and State could uti­lize land for devel­op­ment purposes -

Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion — locus standi — Whether the peti­tion­ers have the nec­es­sary locus standi to file and main­tain the writ peti­tion on their behalf and on behalf of co-villagers for return­ing their land on the basis of inser­tion of clause (d) in sub­sec­tion (2) of sec­tion (3) of the HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974?  and Whether present writ peti­tion can be termed as pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion in view of con­sti­tu­tional issues raised for pro­tect­ing fun­da­men­tal rights of peti­tion­ers as well as rights of cov­il­lagers for restora­tion of their land on basis of amend­ment car­ried out in year 2001, which ear­lier stood vested in State in year 1974?

Delay and laches — Whether the present writ peti­tion suf­fers from the vice of delay and laches and neg­li­gence on the part of the petitioners?

Waiver of Fun­da­men­tal Rights — Whether respon­dents No. 4 to 329 could waive or barter away their fun­da­men­tal rights after pass­ing of the 2001 Act?

Effect of Amend­ment — What is the effect of the amend­ment car­ried out by way of Act No. 18 of 1981 in the Prin­ci­pal Act by adding sec­tion 8-A?

Whether the HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 is an agrar­ian piece of leg­is­la­tion and whether grant­ing lease for min­ing pur­poses falls out side the scope of agrar­ian reform and thus not enti­tled to the pro­tec­tion of Arti­cle 31-A of the Con­sti­tu­tion of India?

Immu­nity of Act — Whether the immu­nity enjoyed by the Prin­ci­pal Act being placed in Schedule-IX can be extended to sec­tion 8-A added in the year 1981?

Whether sec­tion 8-A could be inserted in the year 1981 in the Prin­ci­pal Act by invok­ing sec­tion 14 of the Act?

Prin­ci­ple of read­ing down of statute — Whether Court can read down sec­tion 8-A to avoid strik­ing it down, if it is found viola­tive of Arti­cles 14 and 19 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India?

Pun­jab Vil­lage Com­mon Lands (Reg­u­la­tion), 1953 and Pepsu Vil­lage Com­mon Land (Reg­u­la­tion) Act, 1954 were repealed by Pun­jab Vil­lage Com­mon Lands (Reg­u­la­tion) Act, 1961 — Pun­jab and Haryana High Court has cat­e­gor­i­cally laid down in AIR 1964 (Pun­jab) 503 that Pun­jab Vil­lage Com­mon Lands (Reg­u­la­tion) Act, 1953 was an agrar­ian piece of leg­is­la­tion — Hon’ble Supreme Court in AIR 1965 SC 632 and 1985 PLJ 463 had laid down that Pun­jab Vil­lage Com­mon Lands (Reg­u­la­tion), 1953 is an agrar­ian piece of leg­is­la­tion — Leg­isla­tive His­tory of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 (Act No. 18 of 1974) here­inafter referred to as Act for brevity sake was enacted to pro­vide for vest­ing and uti­liza­tion of vil­lage com­mon land in State of Himachal Pradesh — It has been, there­fore, con­sid­ered proper to vest shami­lat land in State Gov­ern­ment for its proper man­age­ment and uti­liza­tion — (2) land reserved under clause (a) of sub-section (1) of this sec­tion shall be demar­cated by such Rev­enue Offi­cer and in such man­ner as may be pre­scribed — (3) Any scheme framed by State Gov­ern­ment under clause (b) of sub-section (1) of this sec­tion may pro­vide for terms and con­di­tions on which land is to be allot­ted — By way of Amend­ment Act 1981, new sec­tion 8-A was inserted, namely: 8-A — Util­i­sa­tion of land for devel­op­ment of State:- Notwith­stand­ing any­thing con­tained in Sec­tion 8 of Act, State Gov­ern­ment may uti­lize any area of land vested in it under Act by lease to any per­son or by trans­fer to any Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment in inter­ests of devel­op­ment of State, if State Gov­ern­ment is sat­is­fied that there are suf­fi­cient rea­sons to do so sub­ject to con­di­tion that land for pur­poses men­tioned in clause (a) of sub-section (1) of sec­tion 8 in no case shall be less than fifty per cent of land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Act — state­ment of objects and rea­sons for intro­duc­ing Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Util­i­sa­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1981 reads thus: Sec­tion 8 of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 (Act No — 18 of 1974) pro­vides that all lands vested in State Gov­ern­ment under sec­tion 3 of Act, shall be uti­lized only for two pur­poses, viz — (i) an area not less than 50% of total area vested in State Gov­ern­ment for graz­ing and other com­mon pur­poses of inhab­i­tants of estate con­cerned; and (ii) remain­ing and for allot­ment to land­less per­sons — Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 was fur­ther amended by Act called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage 17 Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1987 — Among sources from which land was and is being allot­ted to both cat­e­gories, is vil­lage com­mon land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Util­i­sa­tion Act, 1974 — Sec­tion 8 has, there­fore, to be amended suit­ably — Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — was fur­ther amended by Act called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 2001 — 4. Amend­ment of Sec­tion 4.- In Sec­tion 4 of prin­ci­pal Act, in sub-section (2), after words “State Gov­ern­ment”, words “and will fix lease money at rate noti­fied by 22 State Gov­ern­ment from time to time — Sub­sti­tu­tion of Sec­tion 5. — For Sec­tion 5 of prin­ci­pal Act, fol­low­ing shall be sub­sti­tuted, namely:- “5. state­ment of objects and rea­sons for bring­ing about 2001 Amend­ment Act reads thus: State Gov­ern­ment appointed a Com­mit­tee to make a com­pre­hen­sive review of land laws of State, which exam­ined Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — expres­sion “com­mon pur­poses” is not defined in Sec­tion 2 — Sim­i­larly Sec­tion 5 pro­vides for deal­ing with encroach­ment on lands vested in State Gov­ern­ment under Sec­tion 3 of Act, but does not pro­vide for as to how encroach­ments on Sham­lat lands which have not vested in State Gov­ern­ment is to be removed — Sec­tions 2 and 3 of 2005 Act reads thus: 2 — In sec­tion 3 of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974, after sub-section (2), fol­low­ing new sub-sections shall be added, namely:- “(2-a) land reverted back to co-sharers under clause (d) of sub-section (2) shall not be trans­ferred by such co-sharers, by way of sale, gift, mort­gage or oth­er­wise, dur­ing a period of twenty five years from date of muta­tion of such land — 3. (1) Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Ordi­nance, 2005 is hereby repealed — State Gov­ern­ment had framed Rules called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Rules, 1975, here­inafter referred to as Rules — Rule 3 pro­vides for tak­ing pos­ses­sion of land and Rule 4 pro­vides mech­a­nism for muta­tion of land in favour of State Gov­ern­ment — detailed pro­ce­dure for demar­ca­tion of land under Sec­tion 8 has been pro­vided under Rule 6 — State Gov­ern­ment has also framed Rules called Himachal Pradesh Lease Rules, 1993 in exer­cise of pow­ers vested under Sec­tion 13 of of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 and under Sec­tion 26 of Himachal Pradesh Ceil­ing on Land Hold­ings Act, 1972 — Rule 3 pro­vides for mech­a­nism for grant of land lease and Rule 4 pro­vides for pur­poses for which lease may be granted — eli­gi­bil­ity for grant of land on lease is pro­vided under Rule 6 — detailed pro­ce­dure for grant of land on lease com­mences 26 from Rule 10 to 23 — Himachal Pradesh Lease Rules, 1993 have been fur­ther amended by Himachal Pradesh Lease (Amend­ment) Rules, 2002 whereby amend­ments have been car­ried out in Rules 4, 5, 6, 8, 13, 20, 26 and 27 — State has also framed a Scheme called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Scheme 1975 here­inafter referred to as ‘Scheme’ — Whether peti­tion­ers have nec­es­sary locus standi to file and main­tain writ peti­tion on their behalf and on behalf of co-villagers for return­ing their land on basis of inser­tion of clause (d) of sub-section (2) of sec­tion (3) of HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974? total land owned and pos­sessed by peti­tion­ers along with other vil­lagers was 5679 bighas of vil­lage com­mon land — Thirdly peti­tion­ers have prayed for return­ing of their lands by State after inser­tion of sub 28 sec­tion (d) in sub sec­tion 2 of Sec­tion 3 of Act which has come into force with effect from 9.8.1974 — peti­tion­ers have filed peti­tion for pro­tec­tion of their con­sti­tu­tional as well as legal rights — Court is for­ti­fied in tak­ing this view in view of def­i­nite pro­nounce­ments of law by Supreme Court with regard to locus standi and main­tain­abil­ity of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — We have in such cases per­mit­ted a mem­ber of pub­lic to move Court for enforce­ment of con­sti­tu­tional or legal rights of such per­sons and judi­cial redress for legal wrong or legal injury caused to them — It is true that there are rules made by this Court pre­scrib­ing pro­ce­dure for mov­ing this Court for relief under Art — Can any mem­ber of pub­lic sue for judi­cial redress? view has there­fore been taken by Courts in many deci­sions that when­ever there is a pub­lic wrong or pub­lic injury caused by an act or omis­sion of State or a pub­lic author­ity which is con­trary to Con­sti­tu­tion or law, any mem­ber of pub­lic act­ing bonafide and hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for redres­sal of such pub­lic wrong or pub­lic injury — Indi­vid­ual rights and duties are giv­ing place to meta-individual, col­lec­tive, social rights and duties of classes or groups of per­sons — new social and eco­nomic rights which are sought to be cre­ated in pur­suance of Direc­tive prin­ci­ples of State Pol­icy essen­tially require active inter­ven­tion of State and other pub­lic author­i­ties — prin­ci­ple under­ly­ing tra­di­tional rule of stand­ing is that only holder of right can sue and it is there­fore, held in many juris­dic­tions that since State rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic is holder of pub­lic rights, it alone can sue for redress of pub­lic injury or vin­di­ca­tion of pub­lic inter­est — There is, there­fore, a machin­ery in United King­dom for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury and pro­tec­tion of social, col­lec­tive, what Cap­pel­letti calls ‘dif­fuse’ rights and inter­ests — It is for this rea­son that in pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — lit­i­ga­tion under­taken for pur­pose of redress­ing pub­lic injury, enforc­ing pub­lic duty, pro­tect­ing social, col­lec­tive, ‘dif­fused’ rights and inter­ests or vin­di­cat­ing pub­lic inter­est, any cit­i­zen who is act­ing bonafide and who has suf­fi­cient inter­est has to be accorded stand­ing — What is suf­fi­cient inter­est to give stand­ing to a mem­ber of pub­lic would have to be deter­mined by Court in each indi­vid­ual case — Mc. Whirter case and three well known Black­burn cases clearly estab­lish that any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for enforc­ing a pub­lic duty against a statu­tory or pub­lic author­ity — If a gov­ern­ment depart­ment or a pub­lic author­ity trans­gresses law laid down by Par­lia­ment, or threat­ens to trans­gress it, can a mem­ber of pub­lic come to Court and draw mat­ter to its atten­tion… — We would, there­fore, hold that any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury aris­ing from breach of pub­lic duty or from vio­la­tion of some pro­vi­sion of Con­sti­tu­tion or law and seek enforce­ment of such pub­lic duty and obser­vance of such con­sti­tu­tional or legal pro­vi­sion — A fear is some­times expressed that if we keep door wide open for any mem­ber of pub­lic to enter por­tals of Court to enforce pub­lic duty or to vin­di­cate pub­lic inter­est, Court will be flooded with lit­i­ga­tion — Right to live is a fun­da­men­tal right under Art — A peti­tion under Art — Per­sonal inter­est can­not be enforced through process of this Court under Art — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion in garb of a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion — Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion con­tem­plates legal pro­ceed­ing for vin­di­ca­tion or enforce­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights of a group of per­sons or com­mu­nity which are not able to enforce their fun­da­men­tal rights on account of their inca­pac­ity, poverty or igno­rance of law — A per­son invok­ing juris­dic­tion of this Court under Art — 32 must approach this Court for vin­di­ca­tion of fun­da­men­tal rights of affected per­sons and not for pur­pose of vin­di­ca­tion of his per­sonal grudge or enmity — golden key for pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion was deliv­ered in land mark deci­sion of this Court in, SP Gupta’s case, 1981 (Sup) SCC 87 : (AIR 1982 SC 149) — After hav­ing elab­o­rately explained con­cept of PIL, learned Judge held that: (SCC p — 218, para 23) “… any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury aris­ing from breach of pub­lic duty or from vio­la­tion of some pro­vi­sion of Con­sti­tu­tion or law and seek enforce­ment of such pub­lic duty and obser­vance of such con­sti­tu­tional or legal pro­vi­sion — true nature of peti­tion, there­fore, was that of a peti­tion filed in pub­lic inter­est — While enter­tain­ing a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, this Court in exer­cise of its juris­dic­tion under Art — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India and High Courts under Art — rule of locus has been relaxed by Courts for such pur­poses with a view to enable a cit­i­zen of India to approach Courts to vin­di­cate legal injury or legal wrong caused to a sec­tion of peo­ple by way of vio­la­tion of any statu­tory or con­sti­tu­tional right.” 2 — Whether present writ peti­tion can be termed as pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion in view of con­sti­tu­tional issues raised for pro­tect­ing fun­da­men­tal rights of peti­tion­ers as well as rights of co-villagers for restora­tion of their land on basis of amend­ment car­ried out in year 2001, which ear­lier stood vested in State in year 1974? entire con­cept of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, class lit­i­ga­tion and social action lit­i­ga­tion has been suc­cinctly dealt with by Supreme Court in fol­low­ing cases: 58 Hon’ble Apex Court has held in Fer­til­izer Cor­po­ra­tion Kam­a­gar Union (Regd.) Sin­dri and oth­ers v — Union of India and Oth­ers, AIR 1981 SC 344 that pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion is part of process of par­tic­i­pate jus­tice and “stand­ing” in civil lit­i­ga­tion of that pat­tern must have lib­eral recep­tion at judi­cial door steps — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion — If pub­lic prop­erty is dis­si­pated, it would require a strong argu­ment to con­vince Court that rep­re­sen­ta­tive seg­ments of pub­lic or at least a sec­tion of pub­lic which is directly inter­ested and affected would have no right to com­plain of infrac­tion of pub­lic duties and oblig­a­tions — Cap­pel­letti is right in his stress on impor­tance of access: ” right of effec­tive access to jus­tice has emerged with new social rights — Right to be Heard” — Class-actions will activise legal process where indi­vid­u­als can­not approach court for many rea­sons — I quote from Dis­cus­sion Paper No — 4: [ Law Reform Com­mis­sion, Dis­cus­sion Paper No — 4 — Access to Court –1, Stand­ing: Pub­lic Inter­est Suits, p — 4.] 61 ‘Widened stand­ing rules may — A Fed­eral class action law . — - — [Prof — KE Scott : “Stand­ing in Supreme Court : A Func­tional Analy­sis” (1973) 86.] of locus standi to com­mu­nity ori­en­ta­tion of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, these issues must be con­sid­ered — Why drive com­mon peo­ple to pub­lic inter­est action? After all Aus­tralian, 16 Novem­ber, 1977 was right — Hon’ble Apex Court in Janta Dal v — HS Chowd­hary and Oth­ers, AIR 1993 SC 892 has explained expres­sion pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion to mean legal action ini­ti­ated for enforce­ment of pub­lic or gen­eral inter­est — Their Lord­ships have held as under:- ” expres­sion ‘lit­i­ga­tion’ means a legal action includ­ing all pro­ceed­ings therein, ini­ti­ated in a Court of Law with pur­pose of enforc­ing a right or seek­ing a rem­edy — There­fore, lex­i­cally expres­sion ‘PIL’ means a legal action ini­ti­ated in a Court of Law for enforce­ment of pub­lic inter­est or gen­eral inter­est in which pub­lic or a class of com­mu­nity have pecu­niary inter­est or some inter­est by which their legal rights or lia­bil­i­ties are affected — It is true that there are rules made by this Court pre­scrib­ing pro­ce­dure for mov­ing this Court for relief under Arti­cle 32 and they require var­i­ous for­mal­i­ties to be gone through by a per­son seek­ing to approach this Court — After hav­ing elab­o­rately explained con­cept of PIL, learned Judge held that : “.….…..any mem­ber of pub­lic hav­ing suf­fi­cient inter­est can main­tain an action for judi­cial redress for pub­lic injury aris­ing from breach of pub­lic duty or from vio­la­tion of some pro­vi­sion of Con­sti­tu­tion or law and seek enforce­ment of such pub­lic duty and obser­vance of such con­sti­tu­tional or legal pro­vi­sion — Hon’ble Apex Court has held in Gau­rav Jain ver­sus Union of India and Oth­ers, (1997) 8 SCC 114 that pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion is not adver­sar­ial and it is one of col­lab­o­ra­tion and coop­er­a­tion between State and Court — It is one of col­lab­o­ra­tion and coop­er­a­tion between 68 State and Court — In those cases also, it is legal rights which are secured by courts — Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Mohd — Hon’ble Supreme Court in Guru­vay­oor Devas­wom Man­ag­ing Com­mit­tee and Another ver­sus CK Rajan and Oth­ers, (2003) 7 SCC 546 has sum­marised prin­ci­ples evolved by Hon’ble Supreme Court in rela­tion to Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion as under:- ” prin­ci­ples evolved by this Court in this behalf may be suit­ably sum­ma­rized as under : (i) Court in exer­cise of pow­ers under Art — Court is con­sti­tu­tion­ally bound to pro­tect fun­da­men­tal rights of such dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple so as to direct State to ful­fill its con­sti­tu­tional promises — (ii) Issue of pub­lic impor­tance, enforce­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights of large num­ber of pub­lic vis-a– vis con­sti­tu­tional duties and func­tions of State, if raised, Court treat a let­ter or a telegram as a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion upon relax­ing pro­ce­dural laws as also law relat­ing to plead­ings — (viii) How­ever, in an appro­pri­ate case, although peti­tioner might have moved a Court in his pri­vate inter­est and for redres­sal of per­sonal griev­ances, Court in fur­ther­ance of pub­lic inter­est may treat it nec­es­sary to enquire into state of affairs of sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of jus­tice — In Sachi­danand Pandey and another v — State of West Ben­gal and oth­ers ((1987) 2 SCC 295), this Court held : “61 — Court will not ordi­nar­ily trans­gress into a pol­icy — Court has come down heav­ily when­ever exec­u­tive has sought to impinge upon Court’s juris­dic­tion.” 142 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India — (xi) Ordi­nar­ily High Court should not enter­tain a writ peti­tion by way of Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion ques­tion­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity or valid­ity of a statute or a Statu­tory Rule — 142 of Con­sti­tu­tion are inher­ent in Court and are “COMPLEMENTARY” to those pow­ers which are specif­i­cally con­ferred on Court by var­i­ous statutes — Court fur­ther observed that though pow­ers con­ferred on Court by Art — Court fur­ther observed that this power can­not be used to “sup­plant” sub­stan­tive law applic­a­ble to case or cause under con­sid­er­a­tion of Court — (See also Supreme Court Bar Asso­ci­a­tion v — Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409) — 76 This Court in Balco Employ­ees Union (Regd.) (supra) suc­cinctly opined: “Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, or PIL as it is more com­monly known, entered Indian judi­cial process in 1970 — Pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion was intended to mean noth­ing more than what words them­selves said viz — “lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of pub­lic.” Inci­den­tally, on admin­is­tra­tive side of this Court, cer­tain guide­lines have been issued to be fol­lowed for enter­tain­ing Letters/ Peti­tions received by this Court as Pub­lic Inter­est Lit­i­ga­tion — In Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary (Sixth Edi­tion), “pub­lic inter­est” is defined as fol­lows : “Pub­lic Inter­est some­thing in which pub­lic, or some inter­est by which their legal rights or lia­bil­i­ties are affected — Inter­est shared by national gov­ern­ment.…” Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Indian Banks’ Asso­ci­a­tion, Bom­bay and Oth­ers ver­sus Devkala Con­sul­tancy Ser­vice and Oth­ers, (2004) 11 SCC 1 that in an appro­pri­ate case, whether peti­tioner might have moved a Court in his pri­vate inter­est and for redres­sal of his per­sonal griev­ance, Court in fur­ther­ance of pub­lic inter­est may treat it a neces­sity to enquire into state of affairs of sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion in inter­est of jus­tice — Hon’ble Supreme Court has fur­ther has fur­ther held that a pri­vate inter­est case can also be treated as pub­lic inter­est case — While enter­tain­ing a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion, this Court in exer­cise of its juris­dic­tion under Art — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India and High Courts under Art — rule of locus has been relaxed by Courts for such pur­poses with a view to enable a cit­i­zen of India to approach Courts to vin­di­cate legal injury or legal wrong caused to a sec­tion of peo­ple by way of vio­la­tion of any statu­tory or con­sti­tu­tional right.” peti­tion raises ques­tions of great con­sti­tu­tional and pub­lic impor­tance and are required to be gone into by this Court being pro­tec­tor of con­sti­tu­tional and legal rights of cit­i­zens of India — Hon’ble Supreme Court has enu­mer­ated law with regard to delay and laches in fol­low­ing pro­nounce­ments: Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in Ram­chan­dra Shankar Deod­har and oth­ers v — 32 of Con­sti­tu­tion — This prin­ci­ple was stated in fol­low­ing terms by Hiday­at­ul­lah, CJ, in (1969 2 SCR 824 = (AIR 1970 SC 898): ” party claim­ing Fun­da­men­tal Rights must move Court before other rights come into exis­tence — action of courts can­not harm inno­cent par­ties if their rights emerge by rea­son of delay on part of per­son mov­ing Court.” under Land Acqui­si­tion Act, 1894 — Con­sti­tu­tion is not only para­mount law of land but, it is source and sus­te­nance of all laws — Its pro­vi­sions are con­ceived in pub­lic inter­est and are intended to serve a pub­lic pur­pose — Fun­da­men­tal rights are undoubt­edly con­ferred by Con­sti­tu­tion upon indi­vid­u­als which have to be asserted and 90 enforced by them, if those rights are vio­lated — of Income-tax, Delhi, (1959) Sup (1) SCR 528 : (AIR 1959 SC 149), a Con­sti­tu­tion Bench of this Court con­sid­ered ques­tion whether fun­da­men­tal rights con­ferred by Con­sti­tu­tion can be waived — Con­sti­tu­tion makes no dis­tinc­tion, accord­ing to learned Judges, between fun­da­men­tal rights enacted for ben­e­fit of an indi­vid­ual and those enacted in pub­lic inter­est or on grounds of pub­lic pol­icy.” Sim­i­larly Apex Court has held in Nar Singh Pal v — Union of India and oth­ers, (2000)3 SCC 588 that fun­da­men­tal rights can­not be waived nor there can be any estop­pel against exer­cise of fun­da­men­tal rights — Fun­da­men­tal Rights under Con­sti­tu­tion can­not be bartered away — 9 — Whether Court can read down sec­tion 8-A to avoid strik­ing it down, if it is found viola­tive of Arti­cles 14 and 19 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India? Clause (h) of Sec­tion 2 defines word “land” and “pri­vate forests” to have same mean­ings as assigned to these expres­sions in HP Ceil­ing on Land Hold­ings Act, 1972 — State has framed Rules called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Rules 1975 — per­cent­age of land to be reserved for graz­ing and com­mon pur­poses is to be fixed in con­sul­ta­tion with estate right holder keep­ing in view pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 8 — State Gov­ern­ment had framed Scheme called Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Scheme, 1975 — State has also framed Himachal Pradesh .Lease Rules, 1993 in exer­cise of pow­ers vested under Sec­tion 13 of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 and under Sec­tion 26 of Himachal Pradesh Ceil­ing on Land Hold­ings Act, 1972 — Rule 6 pro­vides eli­gi­bil­ity for grant of land on lease — It is evi­dent from objects and rea­sons, read­ing of entire Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 and Rules framed there­un­der, Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands, Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Scheme, 1975 as well as Lease Rules, 1993 as amended from time to time that Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 is a piece of Agrar­ian Leg­is­la­tion — land which had vested in State has been divided into two parts — expres­sion ‘other eli­gi­ble per­son’ has been added by Sec­tion 2 of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1987 — amend­ment has been car­ried out in Prin­ci­pal Act of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 by 98 way of Himachal Pradesh, Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion (Amend­ment) Act, 1981 whereby Sec­tion 8-A has been inserted in Prin­ci­pal Act, namely, Sec­tion 8-A to fol­low­ing effects: “8-A — Util­i­sa­tion of land for devel­op­ment of State:- Notwith­stand­ing any­thing con­tained in Sec­tion 8 of Act, State Gov­ern­ment may uti­lize any area of land vested in it under Act by lease to any per­son or by trans­fer to any Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment in inter­ests of devel­op­ment of State, if State Gov­ern­ment is sat­is­fied that there are suf­fi­cient rea­sons to do so sub­ject to con­di­tion that land for pur­poses men­tioned in clause (a) of sub-section (1) of sec­tion 8 in no case shall be less than fifty present of land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Act — In our opin­ion, High Court was right in decid­ing as it did on this part of case — Jus­tice Mathew has made these obser­va­tions while inter­pret­ing sec­tion 96 of Agrar­ian Reforms Act (1 of 1964): “Sec­tion 96 of Act says that Land Board shall after reserv­ing in each vil­lage lands nec­es­sary for pub­lic pur­poses, assign on reg­istry remain­ing Lands vested in Gov­ern­ment under sec­tion 86 or 87, as spec­i­fied in sec­tion — Hon’ble Supreme Court in Malankara Rub­ber and Pro­duce Co — Ltd — etc — ver­sus State of Ker­ala and oth­ers etc — AIR 1972 SC 2027 has upheld judg­ment of Ker­ala High Court — (1-A) despite said con­struc­tion by High Court it appears that inten­tion of State Leg­is­la­ture was to over­rule leg­isla­tively view expressed by High Court and not to be bound by inter­pre­ta­tion placed by High Court — In accor­dance with well rec­og­nized canon of con­struc­tion adopted in a num­ber of cases decided by this Court we read sub sec­tion to mean only reser­va­tion of land for such pub­lic pur­poses as would bring about agrar­ian reform inas­much as any acqui­si­tion under Art — ‘ ” con­cept of agrar­ian reform is a com­plex and dynamic one pro­mot­ing wider inter­ests than con­ven­tional reor­ga­ni­za­tion of land sys­tem or dis­tri­b­u­tion of land — Under clause (1) State Leg­is­la­ture is empow­ered to make a law with regard to entry 18 in List II of 7^th Sched­ule which reads “Land, that is to say, right in or over land, land tenures includ­ing rela­tion of land­lord and ten­ant, and col­lec­tion of rents; trans­fer and alien­ation of agri­cul­tural land; land improve­ment and agri­cul­tural loans, col­o­niza­tion” — State Gov­ern­ment had issued noti­fi­ca­tion on 8^th Decem­ber, 1986 — Clause (a) of sub-section (1) of Sec­tion 8 of Prin­ci­pal Act reads as under: “an area not less than 50% of total area vested in State Gov­ern­ment under sec­tion 3 of Act for graz­ing and other com­mon pur­poses of inhab­i­tants of an estate.” “other eli­gi­ble per­sons” — Among sources from which land was and is being allot­ted to both cat­e­gories, is vil­lage com­mon land vested in Gov­ern­ment under Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 — Sec­tion 8 has, there­fore, to be amended suit­ably — Sec­tion 8-A is unrea­son­able and arbi­trary, thus viola­tive of Arti­cle 14 as well as Arti­cle 19 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India — In view of law laid down by Hon’ble Supreme Court and after har­mon­is­ing Sec­tion 8-A of Amend­ment Act, 1981, and other sec­tions of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Rules, 1975 , Himachal Pradesh Lease Rules, 1993 and Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Scheme, 1975, we read down Sec­tion 8-A instead of strik­ing it down by declar­ing that min­ing activities/operations etc., can­not be termed as devel­op­men­tal activ­i­ties as men­tioned in sec­tion 8-A and action of State to grant lease to respon­dent No — 3 from allotable pool is con­trary to Prin­ci­pal Act — Sec­tion 8-A will not get immu­nity under Arti­cle 31-A if devel­op­men­tal activ­i­ties car­ried out by State are against agrar­ian reforms — Hon’ble Supreme Court in Raman­lal Gula­bc­hand Shah etc — etc — v — (To 132 sec­tions in orig­i­nal Act, over 50 new sec­tions have been added while over 60 sec­tions have been amended — It is thus clear that in view of law laid down by Hon’ble Supreme Court no immu­nity is attached to sec­tion 8-A of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Act, 1974 with­out assent of Pres­i­dent of India — Sec­tion 27(1) read thus : “27 (1) — State is to deny no one equal­ity before law — Fun­da­men­tal Rights and Direc­tive Prin­ci­ples have to be bal­anced — Fun­da­men­tal rights enshrined in Part III were added to Con­sti­tu­tion as a check on State power, par­tic­u­larly leg­isla­tive power — Under Arti­cle 32, which is also part of Part III, Supreme Court has been vested with power to ensure com­pli­ance of Part III — Detailed dis­cus­sion in Kesa­vananda Bharati’s case to demon­strate that right to prop­erty was not part of basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion by itself shows that some of fun­da­men­tal rights are part of basic struc­ture of Con­sti­tu­tion — basic struc­ture doc­trine requires State to jus­tify degree of inva­sion of fun­da­men­tal rights — If for­mer is con­se­quence of law, whether by amend­ment of any Arti­cle of Part III or by an inser­tion in Ninth Sched­ule, such law will have to be inval­i­dated in exer­cise of judi­cial review power of Court — vires of sec­tion 8-A can be chal­lenged by peti­tion­ers under Arti­cles 14 and 19 of Con­sti­tu­tion of India since sec­tion 8-A does not enjoy pro­tec­tion under Arti­cle 31-A of Con­sti­tu­tion of India — Could sec­tion 8-A be incor­po­rated in HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974 on strength of sec­tion 14 of Prin­ci­pal Act? In so observ­ing, in our judg­ment, High Court plainly erred — Con­sti­tu­tional Law — duty of Courts Hon’ble Supreme Court has held in KM Kun­haham­mad etc ver­sus State of Ker­ala and oth­ers, AIR 1978 SC 771 that judi­cial approach should be dynamic rather than sta­tic prag­matic and not pedan­tic and elas­tic rather than rigid — Courts and tri­bunals cre­ated by law must guide them­selves by direc­tions and prin­ci­ples embod­ied in law — Some­times law sets pace and pub­lic opin­ion catches up with law — peti­tion has basic ingre­di­ents of being termed as “pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion” akin to social and class action; 3 — There is nei­ther any delay nor neg­li­gence on part of peti­tion­ers to approach this Court for chal­leng­ing vires of Sec­tion 8-A of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974; 4 — Nei­ther peti­tion­ers nor respon­dents No — 4 to 329 can waive or barter away their fun­da­men­tal rights and legal rights avail­able to them as per pro­vi­sions of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974; 5 — Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974 is an agrar­ian piece of leg­is­la­tion; 7 — Sec­tion 14 of Himachal Pradesh Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion, Act, 1974 could not be invoked by State for adding Sec­tion 8-A Con­se­quently, writ peti­tion is allowed -

HP Ceil­ing in Land Hold­ings Act

HP Vil­lage Com­mon Lands Vest­ing and Uti­liza­tion Act, 1974

HP Pan­chay­ati Raj Act, 1994

Cases Referred in chrono­log­i­cal order:

2007 (2) SCC 1

Sir. WH Rat­ti­gan in Digest of Cus­tom­ary Law (15^th Edn.) 1989)

Malik Mohammed Sher Khan Vs Ghu­lam Mohammed, 1932 Vol-XIII ILR 92

AIR 1964 (Pun­jab) 503

AIR 1965 SC 632

1985 PLJ 463

Gram Pan­chayat Vs Mal­winder Singh, 1987 PLJ 463

Rah­man Vs. Sai, ILR 9 Lahore 501

SP Gupta VM Tarkunde, JL Kalra, Iqbal M. Chagla, Rajappa, P. Sub­ra­ma­niam, DN Pandey Vs. Pres­i­dent of India, AIR 1982 SC 149

Exparte Side­botham, (1980) 14 Ch D 458

Reed Bowen & Co. (1887) 19 QBD 174

United States Vs. James Griggs Raines, (1960) 362 US 17 : 4 L Ed 2d 524

Atwood v. Merry Weather, (1867) 5 Eq 464

Durayap­pah v. Fer­nando, (1967) 2 AC 337

Bar­rows v. Jack­son, (1952) 346 US 249 : 97 Law Ed 1586

Sunil Batra v. Delhi Admin­is­tra­tion, AIR 1980 SC 1579

Dr. Upen­dra Baxi v. State of UP (1981) 3 Scale 1137

Rex v. Inland Rev­enue Commrs. (1981) 2 WLR 722

Schwartz and HWR Wade in their book on “Legal Con­trol of Gov­ern­ment” at page 354

Cap­pel­latti in Vol III of his clas­sic work on “Access to Justice”

SA de Smith in “Judi­cial review of Admin­is­tra­tive Action” (Third edi­tion) at page 403

Asso­ci­a­tion of Data Pro­cess­ing Ser­vice v. William B. Camp (1970) 397 US 150 : 43 25 Law Ed 2d 184

Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of United Church of Christ v. FCC 123 US App DC 328

United States v. William B. Richard­son, (1974) 418 US 166

Warth v. Seldin, (1974) 422 US 490

Attor­ney Gen­eral v. Inde­pen­dent Broad­cast­ing Author­ity (1973) 1 AllER 689

Reg v. Greater Lon­don Coun­cil, Exparte Black­burn, (1976) 3 AllER 184

Gouriet v. UPW 1978 AC 482

Fer­til­izer Cor­po­ra­tion Kam­gar Union v. Union of India, AIR 1981 SC 344

Prof. KE Scott: “Stand­ing in the Supreme Court: A Func­tional Analy­sis” (1973) 86

Sub­hash Kumar v. State of Bihar and oth­ers, AIR 1991 SC 420

Band­hua Mukti Morch v. Union of India, (1984) 2 SCC 295 at p 331 : (AIR 1987 SC 1109);

Ramsha­ran Autyanuprasi v. Union of India (1989) Sup 117 SCC 251

Chhetriya Par­dushan Mukti Sang­harsh Samiti v. State of UP, (1990) 4 SCC 449

Janta Dal v. HS Chowd­hary and oth­ers, AIR 1993 SC 892

Dr. Meera Massey (Mrs.) ver­sus Dr. SR Mehro­tra and Oth­ers, (1998) 3 SCC 88

SP Gupta’s case, 1981 (Sup) SCC 87 : (AIR 1982 SC 149)

J. Jay­alalitha ver­sus Gov­ern­ment of Tamil Nadu and Oth­ers, (1999) 1 SCC 53

Chair­man, Rail­way Board and Oth­ers ver­sus Chan­drima Das (Mrs.) and Oth­ers, (2002) 2 SCC 465

Dr. Satya­narayana Sinha v. S. Lal and Co. Pvt. Ltd., AIR 1973 SC 2720 : (1973) 2 SCC 696

MS Jayaraj ver­sus Com­mis­sioner of Excise, Ker­ala and Oth­ers, (2000) 7 SCC 552

Nagar Rice & Flour Mills v. N. Teekappa Gowda & Bros., (1970) 1 SCC 575 : (AIR 1971 SC 246)

Jas­b­hai Motib­hai Desai v. Roshan Kumar Haji Bashir Ahmed, (1976) 1 SCC 671 : (AIR 1976 SC 578)

Jas­b­hai Motib­hai Desai (AIR 1976 SC 578

Ghu­lam Qadir ver­sus Spe­cial Tri­bunal and Oth­ers, (2002) 1 SCC 33

Indian Banks’ Asso­ci­a­tion, Bom­bay and Oth­ers ver­sus Devkala Con­sul­tancy Ser­vice and Oth­ers, (2004) 11 SCC

Nand­k­ishore Ganesh Joshi ver­sus Com­mis­sioner, Munic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion of Kalyan & Dom­bivali and Oth­ers, (2004) 11 SCC 417

Dit­taraj Nathuji Thaware ver­sus State of Maha­rash­tra and Oth­ers, (2005) 1 SCC 590

Schwartz and HWR Wade wrote in Legal Con­trol of Government:

M. Cap­pel­letti, Rabels Z (1976) 669 at 672

Black. ‘The Right to be Heard”. New Zealand LJ, No. 4, 1977, 66

The Law Reform Com­mis­sion, Dis­cus­sion Paper No. 4 — Access to the Court –1, Stand­ing: Pub­lic Inter­est Suits, p. 4

Evi­dence of Mrs. Bess Myer­son, Commr. of Con­sumer Affairs of the City of New York, before the Con­sumer Sub-committee of the US Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Com­merce, No. 91–48, at 172

Prof. KE Scott : “Stand­ing in the Supreme Court : A Func­tional Analy­sis” (1973) 86.

Munic­i­pal Coun­cil, Rat­lam, AIR 1980 SC 1622

Munic­i­pal Coun­cil, Rat­lam v. Shri Vard­hic­hand AIR 1980 SC 1622.

Band­hua Mukti Mor­cha v. Union of India and Oth­ers, AIR 1984 SC 802

Janta Dal v. HS Chowd­hary and Oth­ers, AIR 1993 SC 892

SP Gupta’s case, (AIR 1982 SC 149

Gau­rav Jain ver­sus Union of India and Oth­ers, (1997) 8 SCC 114

BALCO Employ­ees Union (Regd.) v. Union of India and Oth­ers, AIR 2002 SC 350

Mohd. Aslam alias Bhure ver­sus Union of India and Oth­ers, (2003) 4 SCC 1

Guru­vay­oor Devas­wom Man­ag­ing Com­mit­tee and Another ver­sus CK Rajan and Oth­ers, (2003) 7 SCC 546

SP Gupta v. Union of India (1981 (Sup) SCC 87),

People’s Union for Demo­c­ra­tic Rights and oth­ers v. Union of India (1982) 2 SCC 494;

Band­hua Mukti Mor­cha v. Union of India and oth­ers (1984) 3 SCC 161

Janata Dal v. HS Chowd­hary and oth­ers (1992) 4 SCC 305)

Charles Sobhraj v. Supdt, Cen­tral Jail, Tihar, New 72 Delhi (1978) 4 SCC 104

Hus­sainara Kha­toon and oth­ers v. Home Sec­re­tary, State of Bihar (1980) 1 SCC 81

Mrs. Maneka San­jay Gandhi and another v. Miss Rani Jeth­malani, AIR 1979 SC 468

Dwarka Prasad Agar­wal (D) by LRs and another v. BD Agar­wal and oth­ers, 2003 (6) Scale 138

Fer­til­izer Cor­po­ra­tion Kam­gar Union v. Union of India, AIR 1981 SC 344;

SP Gupta (supra); People’s Union for Demo­c­ra­tic Rights (supra); Dr. DC Wad­hwa v. State of Bihar (1987) 1 SCC 378

Balco Employ­ees’ Union (Regd.) v. Union of India and oth­ers (2002) 2 SCC 333

Rural Lit­i­ga­tion and Enti­tle­ment Kendra v. State of UP, 1989 Sup (1) SCC 504

For­ward Con­struc­tion Co. and oth­ers v. Prab­hat Man­dal (Regd.), And­heri and oth­ers (1986) 1 SCC 100

Ramsha­ran Autyanuprasi and another v. Union of India and oth­ers, 1989 Sup (1) SCC 251

Shiv­a­ji­rao Nilangekar Patil v. Dr. Mahesh Mad­hav Gosavi and oth­ers (1987) 1 SCC 227

Band­hua Mukti Mor­cha (supra), Rakesh Chan­dra Narayan v. State of Bihar, 1989 Sup (1) SCC 644

AP Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Board v. MV Nayudu (1999) 2 SCC 718)

Sachi­danand Pandey and another v. State of West Ben­gal and oth­ers ((1987) 2 SCC 295),

Janata Dal v. HS Chowd­hary and oth­ers (1992) 4 SCC 305

Nar­mada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India Paras and oth­ers ((2000) 10 SCC 664

MC Mehta v. Kamal Nath ((2000) 6 SCC 213

Supreme Court Bar Asso­ci­a­tion v. Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409

Vinay Chan­dra Mishra, Re (1995) 2 SCC 584

Supreme Court Bar Asso­ci­a­tion v. Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409

Ashok Kumar Pandey ver­sus State of WB, (2004) 3 SCC 349

Strouds Judi­cial Dic­tio­nary, Vol­ume 4 (IV Edition)

Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary (Sixth Edition)

Dr. B. Singh ver­sus Union of India and Oth­ers, (2004) 3 SCC 363

Indian Banks’ Asso­ci­a­tion, Bom­bay and Oth­ers ver­sus Devkala Con­sul­tancy Ser­vice and Oth­ers, (2004) 11 SCC 1

Waman Rao’s case AIR 1981 SC 271

Coelho Vs State of TN, (2007)2 SCC 1

Ram­chan­dra Shankar Deod­har and oth­ers v. The State of Maha­rash­tra and oth­ers, (1974)1 SCC 317

Tilokc­hand Motic­hand v. HB Mun­shi, (1969) 2 SCR 824 = (AIR 1970 SC 898)

(1969 2 SCR 824 = (AIR 1970 SC 898)

RN Bose v Union of India, (1970) 2 SCR 697 = (AIR 1970 SC 470)

HD Vora v. State of Maha­rash­tra and oth­ers, (1984) 2 SCC 337

Charanjitlal’s case 1950 SCR 869 : (AIR 1951 SC 41)

K. Prasad and oth­ers v. Union of India and oth­ers, AIR 1988 SC 535

Dehri Rohtas Light Rail­way Com­pany Lim­ited v. Dis­trict Board, Bho­jpur and oth­ers, (1992)2 SCC 598

Trilok Chand (AIR 1970 SC 898)

Olga Tel­lis and oth­ers v. Bom­bay Munic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­ers, AIR 1986 SC 180

Bashesh­war Nath v. Commr. of Income-tax, Delhi, (1959) Sup (1) SCR 528 : (AIR 1959 SC 149

Nar Singh Pal v. Union of India and oth­ers, (2000)3 SCC 588

Sham­rao v. Parulekar and oth­ers v. Dis­trict Mag­is­trate, Thana, Bom­bay and oth­ers, Air 1952 SC 324

Craies on Statute Law, 5^th Edi­tion, page 207

Craw­ford on Statu­tory Con­struc­tion, page 110;

‘KESHORAM PODDAR v. NUNDO LAL MALLICK’ 54 IndApp 152 (PC)

Ori­ent Paper and Indus­tries Ltd. and anr. Vs. State of Orissa and oth­ers, 1991 Sup. (1) SC 81

Chern Taong Shang and oth­ers v. Com­man­der SD Bai­jal and oth­ers, (1988) 1 SCC 507

Shashikant Lax­man Kale and another v. Union of India and another, AIR 1990 SC 2114

A. Than­gal Kunju Musaliar v. M. Venki­tacha­lam Potti, (1955) 2 SCR 1196: (AIR 1956 SC 246

State of West Ben­gal v. Union of India, (1964) 1 SCR 371: (AIR 1963 SC 1241

Pan­nalal Bin­jraj v. Union of India, 1957 SCR 233: (AIR 1957 SC 397

Devadoss(dead) by LRs. and another v. Veera Makali Amman Koil Athalur, AIR 1998 SC 750

Narain Kham­man v. Par­gu­man Kumar Jain, (1985) 1 SCC 1 (8) : (AIR 1985 SC 4

Kumar Jagdish Chan­dra Sinha v. Elleen K. Patri­cia D’Sozarie (1995) 1 SCC 164 : (1994 AIR SCW 4770

Ashok Ley­land Ltd. v. State of TN and another, (2004) 3 SCC 1

Godawat Pan Masala Prod­ucts IP Ltd. and another v. Union of India and oth­ers, (2004) 7 SCC 68

Ran­jit Singh and oth­ers (In CA No. 743 of 1963

Major (now Lt. Col.) Micheal AR Skin­ner and 103 oth­ers (CA Nos. 553–554 of 1962) v. The State of Pun­jab and oth­ers, AIR 1965 SC 632

VN Narayanan Nair and oth­ers Ver­sus State of Ker­ala and oth­ers, AIR 1971 Ker­ala 98

Malankara Rub­ber and Pro­duce Co. Ltd. etc. ver­sus State of Ker­ala and oth­ers etc. AIR 1972 SC 2027

Narayan Nair’s case, AIR 1971 Ker­ala 98

Kh. Fida Ali and oth­ers v. State of Jammu and Kash­mir, AIR 1974 SC 1522

State of Ker­ala and another v. The Gwalior Rayon Silk Mfg. (Wvg.) Co. Ltd. etc., AIR 1973 SC 2734

Kanan Devan Hills Pro­duce v. State of Ker­ala, (1972) 2 SCC 218 = (AIR 1972 SC 2301

State of WB vs. Ashish Kumar Roya and oth­ers, (2005)10 SCC 110

Gwalior Rayon Silk Mfg (Wvg.) Co. Ltd. Etc. (AIR 1973 SC 2734

Gujarati Edu­ca­tion Soci­ety and another v. Cal­cutta Munic­i­pal Corpn. and oth­ers, (2003)10 SCC 533

BR Enter­prises vs. State of UP [1999 (9) SCC 700

Raman­lal Gula­bc­hand Shah etc. etc. v. The State of Gujarat and Oth­ers, AIR 1969 SC 168

State of Orissa v. Chan­drasekhar Singh Bhoi, etc., AIR 1970 SC 398

Raman­lal Gula­bc­hand Shah v. State of Gujarat, Civil Appeals Nos. 1751 to 1773 of 1966, D/- 19-4-1968 = (AIR 1969 SC 168);

Sri Ram Narain 123 Medhi v. State of Bom­bay, (1959) Sup (1) SCR 489 = AIR 1959 SC 459

VN Narayanan Nair and Oth­ers v. State of Ker­ala and Oth­ers, AIR 1971 Ker­ala 98

AIR 1978 SC 168

AIR 1978 SC 398

Raman­lal v. State of Gujarat, AIR 1969 SC 168

State of Orissa v. Chan­drasekhar Singh Bhoi, 1970 (1) SCWR 306 = AIR 1970 SC 398

Prag Ice & Oil Mills and another etc. etc. v. Union of India, AIR 1978 SC 1296

Coelho (dead)by LRs. v. State of TN, (2007) 2 SCC 1

Coelho (dead) by LRs. vs. State of TN, (1999) 7 SCC 580

Waman Rao v. Union of India, (1981) 2 SCR 1 : (AIR 1981 SC 271)

Kesa­vananda Bharti, 1973 Sup SCR 1: (AIR 1973 SC 1461

Waman Rao, (AIR 1981 SC 271

Min­erva Mills Ltd. v. Union of India, (1981) 1 SCR 206 : (AIR 1980 SC 1789).

Maharao Sahib Sri Bhim Singh Ji v. Union of India, 1985 Sup (1) SCR 862 : (AIR 1985 SC 1650

Bhim Singh Ji case (AIR 1985 SC 1650

(1999) 7 SCC 580

(2007) 2 SCC 1 IR Coelho Vs. State of TN.

Jalan Trad­ing Com­pany ver­sus Mill Maz­door Sabha, AIR 1967 SC 691

Straw Prod­ucts Lim­ited ver­sus Income Tax Offi­cer, Bhopal, AIR 1968 SC 579

Madeva Upen­dra Sinai and oth­ers ver­sus Union of India, (1975) 3 SCC 765

KM Kun­haham­mad etc ver­sus State of Ker­ala and oth­ers, AIR 1978 SC 771

Jyoti Per­shad v. Admin­is­tra­tor for the Union Ter­ri­tory of Delhi, (1962) 2 SCR 125 at p. 148: (AIR 1961 SC 1602

Lin­gappa Pochanna Appel­war ver­sus State of Maha­rash­tra and another, AIR 1985 SC 389

Srid­ha­ran Motor Ser­vice, Attur ver­sus Indus­trial Tri­bunal, Madras, (1969) 1 LLJ 380

Cases Referred in alpha­bet­i­cal manner:

1985 PLJ 463

2007 (2) SCC 1

A. Than­gal Kunju Musaliar Vs M. Venki­tacha­lam Potti, (1955) 2 SCR 1196: (AIR 1956 SC 246

AIR 1964 (Pun­jab) 503

AIR 1978 SC 168

AIR 1978 SC 398

AP Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Board Vs MV Nayudu (1999) 2 SCC 718)

Ashok Kumar Pandey Vs State of WB, (2004) 3 SCC 349

Ashok Ley­land Ltd. Vs State of TN, (2004) 3 SCC 1

Aslam alias Bhure Vs UOI, (2003) 4 SCC 1

Asso­ci­a­tion of Data Pro­cess­ing Ser­vice Vs William B. Camp (1970) 397 US 150 : 43 25 Law Ed 2d 184

Attor­ney Gen­eral Vs Inde­pen­dent Broad­cast­ing Author­ity (1973) 1 AllER 689

Atwood Vs Merry Weather, (1867) 5 Eq 464

B. Singh Vs UOI, (2004) 3 SCC 363

Balco Employ­ees’ Union (Regd.) Vs UOI (2002) 2 SCC 333

BALCO Employ­ees Union (Regd.) Vs UOI, AIR 2002 SC 350

Band­hua Mukti Morch Vs UOI, (1984) 2 SCC 295 (AIR 1987 SC 1109);

Band­hua Mukti Mor­cha Vs UOI (1984) 3 SCC 161

Band­hua Mukti Mor­cha Vs UOI, AIR 1984 SC 802

Bar­rows Vs Jack­son, (1952) 346 US 249 : 97 Law Ed 1586

Bashesh­war Nath Vs CIT, Delhi, (1959) Sup (1) SCR 528 : (AIR 1959 SC 149

Bhim Singh Ji case (AIR 1985 SC 1650

Black. ‘The Right to be Heard”. New Zealand LJ, No. 4, 1977, 66

Black’s Law Dic­tio­nary (Sixth Edition)

BR Enter­prises Vs State of UP [1999(9) SCC 700

Cap­pel­latti in Vol III of his clas­sic work on “Access to Justice”

Chair­man, Rail­way Board Vs Chan­drima Das (Mrs.), (2002) 2 SCC 465

Charanjitlal’s case 1950 SCR 869 : (AIR 1951 SC 41)

Charles Sobhraj Vs Supdt, Cen­tral Jail, Tihar, New 72 Delhi (1978) 4 SCC 104

Chern Taong Shang Vs Com­man­der SD Bai­jal, (1988) 1 SCC 507

Chhetriya Par­dushan Mukti Sang­harsh Samiti Vs State of UP, (1990) 4 SCC 449

Coelho Vs State of TN, (1999) 7 SCC 580

Coelho Vs. State of TN (2007) 2 SCC 1

Craies on Statute Law, 5^th Edi­tion, page 207

Craw­ford on Statu­tory Con­struc­tion, page 110;

DC Wad­hwa Vs State of Bihar (1987) 1 SCC 378

Dehri Rohtas Light Rail­way Com­pany Lim­ited Vs Dis­trict Board, Bho­jpur, (1992)2 SCC 598

Deva­doss Vs Veera Makali Amman Koil Athalur, AIR 1998 SC 750

Dit­taraj Nathuji Thaware Vs State of Maha­rash­tra, (2005) 1 SCC 590

Durayap­pah Vs Fer­nando, (1967) 2 AC 337

Dwarka Prasad Agar­wal (D) by LRs Vs BD Agar­wal, 2003 (6) Scale 138

Evi­dence of Mrs. Bess Myer­son, Commr. of Con­sumer Affairs of the City of New York, before the Con­sumer Sub-committee of the US Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Com­merce, No. 91–48, at 172

Exparte Side­botham, (1980) 14 Ch D 458

Fer­til­izer Cor­po­ra­tion Kam­gar Union Vs UOI, AIR 1981 SC 344;

Fida Ali Vs State of Jammu and Kash­mir, AIR 1974 SC 1522

For­ward Con­struc­tion Co. Vs Prab­hat Man­dal (Regd.), And­heri (1986) 1 SCC 100

Gau­rav Jain Vs UOI, (1997) 8 SCC 114

Ghu­lam Qadir Vs Spe­cial Tri­bunal, (2002) 1 SCC 33

Godawat Pan Masala Prod­ucts IP Ltd. Vs UOI, (2004) 7 SCC 68

Gouriet Vs UPW 1978 AC 482

Gram Pan­chayat Vs Mal­winder Singh, 1987 PLJ 463

Gujarati Edu­ca­tion Soci­ety Vs Cal­cutta Munic­i­pal Corpn., (2003)10 SCC 533

Guru­vay­oor Devas­wom Man­ag­ing Com­mit­tee Vs CK Rajan, (2003) 7 SCC 546

Gwalior Rayon Silk Mfg (Wvg.) Co. Ltd. (AIR 1973 SC 2734

HD Vora Vs State of Maha­rash­tra, (1984) 2 SCC 337

Hus­sainara Kha­toon Vs Home Sec­re­tary, State of Bihar (1980) 1 SCC 81

Indian Banks’ Asso­ci­a­tion, Bom­bay Vs Devkala Con­sul­tancy Ser­vice, (2004) 11 SCC 1

J. Jay­alalitha Vs Gov­ern­ment of Tamil Nadu, (1999) 1 SCC 53

Jalan Trad­ing Com­pany Vs Mill Maz­door Sabha, AIR 1967 SC 691

Janata Dal Vs HS Chowd­hary (1992) 4 SCC 305, AIR 1993 SC 892

Jas­b­hai Motib­hai Desai Vs Roshan Kumar Haji Bashir Ahmed, (1976) 1 SCC 671 : (AIR 1976 SC 578)

Jyoti Per­shad Vs Admin­is­tra­tor for the Union Ter­ri­tory of Delhi, (1962) 2 SCR 125, AIR 1961 SC 1602

K. Prasad Vs UOI, AIR 1988 SC 535

Kanan Devan Hills Pro­duce Vs state of Ker­ala, (1972) 2 SCC 218 = (AIR 1972 SC 2301

Kesa­vananda Bharti, 1973 Sup SCR 1: (AIR 1973 SC 1461

Keshoram Pod­dar Vs Nundo Lal Mallick 54 IndApp 152 (PC)

KM Kun­haham­mad etc Vs State of Ker­ala, AIR 1978 SC 771

Kumar Jagdish Chan­dra Sinha Vs Elleen K. Patri­cia D’Sozarie (1995) 1 SCC 164 : (1994 AIR SCW 4770

Law Reform Com­mis­sion, Dis­cus­sion Paper No. 4 — Access to the Court –1, Stand­ing: Pub­lic Inter­est Suits, p. 4

Lin­gappa Pochanna Appel­war Vs State of Maha­rash­tra, AIR 1985 SC 389

M. Cap­pel­letti, Rabels Z (1976) 669 at 672

Madeva Upen­dra Sinai Vs UOI, (1975) 3 SCC 765

Maharao Sahib Sri Bhim Singh Ji Vs UOI, 1985 Sup (1) SCR 862 : (AIR 1985 SC 1650

Malankara Rub­ber and Pro­duce Co. Ltd. Vs State of Ker­ala AIR 1972 SC 2027

Malik Mohammed Sher Khan Vs Ghu­lam Mohammed, 1932 Vol-XIII ILR 92

Maneka San­jay Gandhi Vs Miss Rani Jeth­malani, AIR 1979 SC 468

MC Mehta Vs Kamal Nath ((2000) 6 SCC 213

Meera Massey Vs SR Mehro­tra, (1998) 3 SCC 88

Micheal AR Skin­ner Vs State of Pun­jab, AIR 1965 SC 632

Min­erva Mills Ltd. Vs UOI, (1981) 1 SCR 206 : (AIR 1980 SC 1789).

MS Jayaraj Vs Com­mis­sioner of Excise, Ker­ala, (2000) 7 SCC 552

Munic­i­pal Coun­cil, Rat­lam Vs Shri Vard­hic­hand AIR 1980 SC 1622.

Nagar Rice & Flour Mills Vs N. Teekappa Gowda & Bros., (1970) 1 SCC 575 : (AIR 1971 SC 246)

Nand­k­ishore Ganesh Joshi Vs Com­mis­sioner, Munic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion of Kalyan & Dom­bivali, (2004) 11 SCC 417

Nar Singh Pal Vs UOI, (2000)3 SCC 588

Narain Kham­man Vs Par­gu­man Kumar Jain, (1985) 1 SCC 1 (8) : (AIR 1985 SC 4

Narayan Nair’s case, AIR 1971 Ker­ala 98

Nar­mada Bachao Andolan Vs UOI Paras ((2000) 10 SCC 664

Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of United Church of Christ Vs FCC 123 US App DC 328

Olga Tel­lis Vs Bom­bay Munic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion, AIR 1986 SC 180

Ori­ent Paper and Indus­tries Ltd. and anr. Vs. State of Orissa, 1991 Sup. (1) SC 81

Pan­nalal Bin­jraj Vs UOI, 1957 SCR 233: (AIR 1957 SC 397

People’s Union for Demo­c­ra­tic Rights Vs UOI (1982) 2 SCC 494;

Prag Ice & Oil Mills etc. etc. Vs UOI, AIR 1978 SC 1296

Prof. KE Scott : “Stand­ing in the Supreme Court : A Func­tional Analy­sis” (1973) 86.

Rah­man Vs. Sai, ILR 9 Lahore 501

Rakesh Chan­dra Narayan Vs State of Bihar, 1989 Sup (1) SCC 644

Raman­lal Gula­bc­hand Shah etc. etc. Vs The State of Gujarat, AIR 1969 SC 168

Raman­lal Gula­bc­hand Shah Vs State of Gujarat, Civil Appeals Nos. 1751 to 1773 of 1966, D/- 19-4-1968 = (AIR 1969 SC 168);

Raman­lal Vs State of Gujarat, AIR 1969 SC 168

Ram­chan­dra Shankar Deod­har Vs The State of Maha­rash­tra, (1974)1 SCC 317

Ramsha­ran Autyanuprasi Vs UOI (1989) Sup 117 SCC 251

Ramsha­ran Autyanuprasi Vs UOI, 1989 Sup (1) SCC 251

Ran­jit Singh (In CA No. 743 of 1963

Reed Bowen & Co. (1887) 19 QBD 174

Reg Vs Greater Lon­don Coun­cil, Exparte Black­burn, (1976) 3 AllER 184

Rex Vs Inland Rev­enue Commrs. (1981) 2 WLR 722

RN Bose v UOI, (1970) 2 SCR 697 = (AIR 1970 SC 470)

Rural Lit­i­ga­tion and Enti­tle­ment Kendra Vs State of UP, 1989 Sup (1) SCC 504

SA de Smith in “Judi­cial review of Admin­is­tra­tive Action” (Third edi­tion) at page 403

Sachi­danand Pandey Vs State of West Ben­gal ((1987) 2 SCC 295),

Satya­narayana Sinha Vs S. Lal and Co. Pvt. Ltd., AIR 1973 SC 2720 : (1973) 2 SCC 696

Schwartz and HWR Wade in their book on “Legal Con­trol of Gov­ern­ment” at page 354

Schwartz and HWR Wade wrote in Legal Con­trol of Government:

Sham­rao Vs Parulekar Vs Dis­trict Mag­is­trate, Thana, Bom­bay, Air 1952 SC 324

Shashikant Lax­man Kale Vs UOI, AIR 1990 SC 2114

Shiv­a­ji­rao Nilangekar Patil Vs Dr. Mahesh Mad­hav Gosavi (1987) 1 SCC 227

Sir. WH Rat­ti­gan in Digest of Cus­tom­ary Law (15^th Edn.) 1989)

SP Gupta VM Tarkunde, JL Kalra, Iqbal M. Chagla, Rajappa, P. Sub­ra­ma­niam, DN Pandey . Vs. Pres­i­dent of India, AIR 1982 SC 149

SP Gupta Vs UOI (1981 (Sup) SCC 87), AIR 1982 SC 149)

Sri Ram Narain Medhi Vs State of Bom­bay, (1959) Sup (1) SCR 489 = AIR 1959 SC 459

Srid­ha­ran Motor Ser­vice, Attur Vs Indus­trial Tri­bunal, Madras, (1969) 1 LLJ 380

State of Ker­ala Vs Gwalior Rayon Silk Mfg. (Wvg.) Co. Ltd. AIR 1973 SC 2734

State of Orissa Vs Chan­drasekhar Singh Bhoi, 1970 (1) SCWR 306 = AIR 1970 SC 398

State of WB Vs Ashish Kumar Roya, (2005)10 SCC 110

State of WB Vs UOI, (1964) 1 SCR 371: (AIR 1963 SC 1241

Straw Prod­ucts Lim­ited Vs Income Tax Offi­cer, Bhopal, AIR 1968 SC 579

Strouds Judi­cial Dic­tio­nary, Vol­ume 4 (IV Edition)

Sub­hash Kumar Vs State of Bihar, AIR 1991 SC 420

Sunil Batra Vs Delhi Admin­is­tra­tion, AIR 1980 SC 1579

Supreme Court Bar Asso­ci­a­tion Vs UOI (1998) 4 SCC 409

Tilokc­hand Motic­hand Vs HB Mun­shi, (1969) 2 SCR 824 = (AIR 1970 SC 898)

United States Vs William B. Richard­son, (1974) 418 US 166

United States Vs. James Griggs Raines, (1960) 362 US 17 : 4 L Ed 2d 524

Upen­dra Baxi Vs State of UP (1981) 3 Scale 1137

Vinay Chan­dra Mishra, Re (1995) 2 SCC 584

VN Narayanan Nair Vs State of Ker­ala, AIR 1971 Ker­ala 98

Waman Rao Vs UOI, (1981) 2 SCR 1 : (AIR 1981 SC 271)

Warth Vs Seldin, (1974) 422 US 490

Khatri Ram Vs State of HP