Case: Guru Datta Sharma Vs. State of Bihar &amp; Another

ex facie regulatory may in substance be confiscatory...." Lord Radcliffe followed on the same lines and referred in this context to Slattery v. Naylor, (1888) 13 AC 446, where the validity of a municipal bye-law which prevented an owner from using the property which he had purchased-burial ground-for the only, purpose for which it could be used was upheld by the Judicial Committee as not amounting to depriving an owner of his property without compensation.30. We consider the principles laid down in the Belfast case (supra) apt as an aid to the construction of the content of the expression "acquired" in S. 299(2) of the Government of India Act, 1935.The contention urged by learned Counsel for the appellant that the deprivation of the landholder of the right of management and control over the forest without his legal title thereto or beneficial enjoyment thereof being affected amounts to acquisition of land within S. 299(2) of the Government of India Act, 1935 must be rejected. The extract we have made earlier from the judgment of Viscount Simonds affords a sufficient answer to a submission that the right of the landholder to possession was itself a right of property and as this had been taken over it constituted an acquisition within the constitutional provision. Property, as a legal concept, is the sum of a bundle of rights and in the case of tangible property would include the right of possession, the right to enjoy, the right to destroy, the right to retain, the right to alienate and so on. All test, of course, would be subject to the relevant law-procedural or substantive- bearing upon each of these incidents, but the strands that make up the total are not individually to be identified as those constituting "property." So understood, there is no scope for the contention that the imposition, so to speak, of a compulsory Governmental agency for the purpose of managing the forest with liability imposed to account for the income as laid down by the statute is an "acquisition" of the property itself within S. 299(2) of the Government of India Act, 1935.31. A very minor point was urged by the learned Counsel based upon the language of sub-s. (5) of S. 299 which reads:"299 (5) In this section land includes immovable property of every kind and any rights in or over such property, and undertaking includes part of an undertaking."Learned Counsel suggested that the right to possession, management and control over the estate was "a right in or over such property " and that if it was so construed, the taking over of such a right would be tantamount to "acquisition of land" within S. 299(2).There is no substance in this argument, because the rights referred to in S. 299(5) are derivative rights, like interests carved by an owner -a lessee, mortgagee etc.-and not an incident of a property right regarding which we have already expressed ourselves. We therefore hold that the impugned enactments were validly enacted and are not obnoxious to the provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935.32. There remains for consideration the third point urged that even if the Bihar Private Forests Act 1946 and 1948 were valid when enacted, the relevant provisions cannot be enforced against the appellant on the ground that the enforcement would violate the fundamental rights granted to the appellant by Arts. 19 and 31 of the Constitution. The argument was this: The lease in favour of the appellant was for terms of 8 or 9 years and would have continued, if nothing else had happened, till certain dates in 1954and 1955. He has, however, been deprived of the benefit of the lease by the operation of the impugned legislation and the appellants rights which he could have otherwise enjoyed beyond January 26, 1950 have been denied to him, and this is tantamount to the impugned enactments operating beyond January 26, 1950. In support of this submission learned Counsel invited our attention to a passage in the judgment of this Court in Shanti Sarup v. Union of India, (S) AIR 1955 SC 624 at p. 628. That case was concerned primarily with the constitutionality of an order dated October 21, 1952 passed by the Central Government under S. 3(4) of the Essential Supplies (Temporary Powers) Act, 1946, by which the petitioner-firm was dispossessed of a textile-mill which they owned and managed. There had been an earlier order of the State Government dated July 21, 1949 also which was similarly impugned. B. K. Mukherjea, J., as he then was, who spoke for the Court, after pointing out that the order of the Central Government was not supportable under the terms of the enactment under which it was made and therefore had deprived the petitioner of his property under Art 31 of the Constitution proceeded to add:"But even assuming that the deprivation took place earlier and at a time when the Constitution had not come into force, the order effecting the deprivation which continued from day to day must be held to have come into conflict with the fundamental rights of the petitioner as soon as the Constitution came into force and become void on and from that date under Art. 13(1) of the Constitution."We are unable to construe these observations as affording any assistance to the appellant. The lease or licence which the appellant had obtained by contract from the landholder was put an end to, once and for all by virtue of the provisions contained in S. 22 of the impugned enactment which made provision for compensation for the extinguishment of those rights. That took place long before the Constitution, in 1946. We have held that the legislation under which the appellants rights were extinguished, subject to his claim for compensation, was a valid law.It would therefore follow that the appellant could have no rights which could survive the Constitution so as to enable him to invoke the protection of Part III thereof. In this point also we must hold against the appellant.

Decision (1 = appeal accepted, 0 = rejected): 0

Explanation:
0[ds]15. The succeeding provisions of the enactment far from supporting the case that the correct specification of the name of the landlord is a legal pre-requisite of a valid notification, points to the conclusion that so far as the notification is concerned the name of the landlord is not a legal requirement. For instance, reference may be made to S. 21 where provision is made for the issue of an order prohibiting, until the date of the publication of a notification under S. 29, the cutting, collecting or removal of any trees in any forest. Such an order might be issued simultaneously with a notification under S. 14 and the order is "to be published in the neighbourhood of the forest". Provisions of this sort indicate what we have already mentioned, that the emphasis in the notification is on specification of the land and not so much on who the owner or the person interested in it was. We are therefore clearly of the opinion that the learned Judges of the High Court were right in holding that the notification under S. 14 did not contravene thelearned Subordinate Judge, by a process of reasoning which we are unable to follow, held that the terms of this enactment were insufficient to validate the non-service of the notice on the landlord as required by S. 14 and the other provisions of Ch. III of the Bihar Private Forests Act. The learned Judges of the High Court, on the other hand held and, in our opinion, correctly, that the effect of the failure to serve notices or any informality in the service of the notices required by S. 14 and succeeding sections of the Act was rectified and validated by the Act. In agreement with the learned Judges of the High Court we hold that the proceedings taken under Ch. III of the Act, including the notification issued under S. 14 were valid and in accordance with the law and that if the Bihar Private Forests Act were valid the plaintiff could have no legal ground of complaint which he could agitate in the suit and that the suit was therefore properly directed to berents and profits accruing from the estate were to be payable to and to be collected by the Manager who alone was, under the statute competent to grant valid receipts therefor. There were special provisions empowering the Manager to order the removal of mortgagees or lessees-in-possession by virtue of agreements with the proprietor or tenure-holder. Special provisions were also made for dealing with the claims of creditors- both secured and unsecured. Section 20(5) of the Act made provision for the disposal of the income, rents and profits received by the manager. They were to be applied first for the payment of revenue to Government, then to municipal rents, next to costs of management and supervision, then for an allowance to the proprietor to be fixed by rules made by Government, and any surplus remaining thereafter was to be paid to the proprietor at the end of each financial year with power, however, to the manager to retain such portion of the surplus which he might consider necessary as a working balance for the ensuing year. The manager was to have power to contract loans on the security of the estate or tenure. The jurisdiction of the civil Courts was barred in respect of matters for which provision was made by the Act. Though there was a direction that the manager should have his accounts audited with a right to the proprietor or tenure-holder to inspect these accounts, in cases however where these accounts were not audited the right of the proprietor was merely to draw the attention of the Government to the lapse, with however a bar on enforcing such rights by resort to the courts even in the event of the Provincial Government not taking anyis not necessary for the purpose of this case to canvass the question as to whether the taking over, for better management, of an estate in the manner as was done by the Bihar Act of 1949 is or is not within item 21 of the Provincial Legislative List in Sch. VII tothe Government of India Act, 1935.The enactments now impugned are certainly in relation to "forests" and fall within item 22 of the Provincial Legislative List which reads "22. Forests". It is not necessary to decide whether entry 21 dealing with "Land etc." would cover legislation on forests, because of the special provision in Entry 22 in relation to "forests"-an entry which has come down from the Devolution Rules under the Government of India Act,1919. In our opinion, the item "Forests" would permit all and every legislation which in pith and substance, to use a phrase familiar in this branch of the law, was on the subject of "forests". It is not possible to argue that the two Acts here impugned do not satisfy thisconsider this submission wholly without substance. The considerations arising from the width or amplitude to be attached to the meaning of expressions dealing with the conferment of legislative power occurring in a constitutional document should suffice to reject this submission. In this connection we might refer to the decision of the Federal Court in Lahore Municipality v. Daulat Ram Kapur, 1942 FCR 31: (AIR 1942 FC 14) which dealt with the scope of the entry Salt in the Central Legislative List in Sch. VII.We consider the principles laid down in the Belfast case (supra) apt as an aid to the construction of the content of the expression "acquired" in S. 299(2) ofthe Government of India Act,contention urged by learned Counsel for the appellant that the deprivation of the landholder of the right of management and control over the forest without his legal title thereto or beneficial enjoyment thereof being affected amounts to acquisition of land within S. 299(2) ofthe Government of India Act,1935 must be rejected. The extract we have made earlier from the judgment of Viscount Simonds affords a sufficient answer to a submission that the right of the landholder to possession was itself a right of property and as this had been taken over it constituted an acquisition within the constitutional provision. Property, as a legal concept, is the sum of a bundle of rights and in the case of tangible property would include the right of possession, the right to enjoy, the right to destroy, the right to retain, the right to alienate and so on. All test, of course, would be subject to the relevant law-procedural or substantive- bearing upon each of these incidents, but the strands that make up the total are not individually to be identified as those constituting "property." So understood, there is no scope for the contention that the imposition, so to speak, of a compulsory Governmental agency for the purpose of managing the forest with liability imposed to account for the income as laid down by the statute is an "acquisition" of the property itself within S. 299(2) ofthe Government of India Act,are unable to construe these observations as affording any assistance to the appellant. The lease or licence which the appellant had obtained by contract from the landholder was put an end to, once and for all by virtue of the provisions contained in S. 22 of the impugned enactment which made provision for compensation for the extinguishment of those rights. That took place long before the Constitution, in 1946. We have held that the legislation under which the appellants rights were extinguished, subject to his claim for compensation, was a valid law.It would therefore follow that the appellant could have no rights which could survive the Constitution so as to enable him to invoke the protection of Part III thereof. In this point also we must hold against the appellant.