Case: Sardar Inder Singh Vs. State of Rajasthan

When the British were the Rulers of this Country, Rajputana, as the State was then known, consisted of 18 principalities claiming sovereign status. After independence, a movement was set afoot for the integration of all the principalities into a single State, and the process was completed on May 5,1949, when all of them became merged in a Union called the United State of Rajasthan. The constitution of the State was settled in a Covenant, to which all the Rulers agreed. Under Art. II of the Covenant, the States agreed "to unite and integrate their territories in one State with a common executive, legislature and, judiciary by the name of the United State of Rajasthan." Under Art. VI (2), the Rulers made over all their rights, authorities and jurisdiction to the new State which "shall thereafter be exercisable only as provided by this Covenant or by the Constitution to be framed thereunder." Article X (3) provides that:"Until a Constitution so framed comes into operation after receiving the assent of the Rajpramukh, the legislative authority of the United State shall vest in the Rajpramukh, who may make and promulgate Ordinances for the peace and good government of the State or any part thereof, and any Ordinance so made shall have the like force of laws as an Act passed by the legislature of the United State."Article X(3) was subsequently modified by substituting for the words "Until a Constitution so framed comes into operation after receiving the assent of the Rajpramukh," the words "Until the Legislative Assembly of Rajasthan has been duly constituted and summoned to meet for the first session under the provisions of the Constitution of India. "Reference may also be made to Art. 385 of the Constitution of India, which runs as follows:"Until the House or Houses of the legislature of a State specified in Part B of the First Schedule has or have been duly constituted and summoned to meet for the first session under the provisions of the Constitution, the body or authority functioning immediately before the commencement of this Constitution as the Legislature of the corresponding Indian State shall exercise the powers and perform the duties conferred by the provisions of this Constitution on the House of the Legislature of the State so specified."It may be mentioned that the Legislative Assembly of Rajasthan was constituted and came into being on 29th March 1952, and until then, it was the Rajpramukh in whom the Legislative authority of the State was vested3. On 21st June 1949, the Rajpramukh promulgated the impugned legislation, the Rajasthan (Protection of Tenants) Ordinance NO. IX of 1949. The preamble to the Ordinance runs as follows:"Whereas with a view to putting a check on the growing tendency of landholders to eject or dispossess tenants from their holdings, and in the wider national interest of increasing the production of foodgrains, it is expedient to make provisions for the protection of tenants in Rajasthan from ejectment or dispossession from their holdings."Section 4 of the Ordinance provides:"So long as the Ordinance is in force in any area of Rajasthan no tenant shall be liable to ejectment or dispossession from the whole or a part of his holding in such area on any ground whatsoever."Section 7 provides for reinstatement of tenants who had been in occupation on the first day of April 1948 but had been subsequently dispossessed: and by an Amendment Act No. XVII of 1952, this right was extended to tenants, who got into possession even after the first day of April4. Section S (1) of the Ordinance which is very material for the present petitions, runs as follows:"It shall come into force at once, and shall remain in force for a period of two years unless this period is further extended by the Rajpramukh by notification in the Rajasthan Gazette."In exericise of the power conferred by this section, the Rajpramukh issued a notification on 14th June 1951, providing that Ordinance No. IX of 1949 "shall remain in force for a further period of two years with effect from 21st June 1951. "On 20th June 1953 he issued a further notification providing that the said Ordinance "shall remain in force for a term of one year with effect from 21st June 1953." Doubts would appear to have been expressed about the validity of the notification dated 20th June 1953, on the ground that as the State Legislature had come into being on 29th March 1952, the power of the Rajpramukh to legislate under Art. 385 of the Constitution had come to an end on that date. To resolve the doubt, the Rajpramukh issued on 15th February 1954, an Ordinance under Art. 348 (3) of the Constitution, No. III of 1954, substituting for S.3 the following:"3. It shall come into force at once and shall remain in force for a period of five years."That would have given operation of Ordinance No. IX of 1949 up to 21st June 1954. Then the legislature of the State repealed Ordinance No. III of 1954, and enacted the Rajasthan (Protection of Tenants) Amendment Act No. X of 1954, and that came into force on 17th April 1954. Under this Act, S.3 of Ordinance No. IX of 1949 was re-enacted as follows:"It shall come into force at once and shall remain in force for a period of seven years."The petitioners question the validity of Ordinance NO. IX of 1949 of the notifications dated 14th June 1951, and 20th June 1953, and of Act No. X of 1954. It appears that on 15th October 1955, a new enactment. the Rajasthan Tenancy Act No. III of 1955, came into force, and the relationship between landlords and tenants is now governed by this Act. But as a large number of petitions filed by the tenants under Ordinance NO. IX of 1949 are still undisposed of by reason of stay order obtained by the petitioners herein, it is necessary for the purpose of granting relief of them on these petitions, to decide whether the impugned Ordinance and notifications are bad on any of the grounds put forward by the petitioners. We accordingly proceed to a consideration of the present petitions on their merits.

Reasoning: It will be noticed that the authority conferred on the Bihar Government by the proviso to S.3 was one not merely to extend the lift of the Act as in the present case, but also to extend it with such modifications as might be specified in the notificationIn our opinion, S.3 of the Ordinance in so far as it authorises the Rajpramukh to extend the life of the Act falls within the category of conditional legislation and is, in consequence intra viresThis is clear authority that a provision in a statute conferring a power on an outside authority to bring it into force at such time as it might in its own discretion, determine, is conditional and not delegated legislation and that it will be valid, unless there is in the constitution Act any limitation on its power to enact such a legislationThe reason for upholding a legislative provision authorising an outside authority to bring an Act into force at such time as it may determine is that it must depend on the facts as they may exist at a given point of time whether the law should then be made to operate, and that the decision of such as issue is best left to an executive authority. Such legislation is termed conditional, because the legislature has itself made the law in all its completeness as regards "place, person, laws, powers," leaving nothing for an outside authority to legislate on, the only function assigned to it being to bring the law into operation at such time as it might decide. And it can make no difference in the character of a legislation as a conditional one that the Legislature, after itself enacting the law and fixing, on a consideration of the facts as they might have then existed, the period of its duration, confers a power on an outside authority to extend its operation for a further period if it is satisfied that the state of facts which called forth the legislation continues to subsistIn the present case, the preamble to the Ordinance clearly recites the state of facts which necessitated the enactment of the law in question, and S.3 fixed the duration of the Act as two years, on an understanding of the situation as it then existed. At the same time, it conferred a power on the Rajpramukh to extend the life of the Ordinance beyond that period, if the state of affairs then should require it. When such extension is decided by the Rajpramukh and notified, the law that will operate is the law which was enacted by the legislative authority in respect of "place, person, laws, powers," and it is clearly conditional and not delegated legislation as laid down in 5 Ind. App 178(B), and must, in consequence, be held to be valid.It follows that we are unable to agree with the statement of the law in 1949 F C R 593: (A I R 1949 F C 175)(A) that a power to extend the lift of an enactment cannot validly be conferred on an outside authorityIt was not an independent piece of legislation such as could be enacted only by the, then competent legislative authority of the State, but merely an exercise of a power conferred by a statute which had been previously enacted by the appropriate legislative authority. The exercise of such a power is referable not to the legislative competence of the Rajpramukh but to Ordinance No. IX of 1949, and provided S.3 is valid, the validity of the notification is coextensive with that of the Ordinance. If the Ordinance did not come to an end by reason of the fact that the authority of the Rajpramukh to legislate came to an end-and that is not and cannot be disputed- neither did the power to issue a notification which is conferred therein. The true position is that it is in his character as the authority on whom power was conferred under S.3 of the Ordinance that the Rajpramukh issued the impugned notification, and not as the legislative authority of the State. This objection should accordingly be overruled.It is true that that section does not itself indicate the grounds on which exemption could be granted, but the preamble to the Ordinance sets out with sufficient clearness the policy of the Legislature, and as that governs S.15 of the Ordinance, the decision of the Government thereunder cannot be said to be unguided. Vide Harishanker Bagla v. The State of Madhya Pradesh, (1955)l S C R 380 at p. 386: (A I R 1954 S C 465 at p. 467)(F). But even if S.15 were to be held to be bad, that does not affect the rest of the legislation, as the matter dealt with in that section is clearly severable. In fact, S.15 was not in the Ordinance as it was originally enacted, and was only introduced later by Ordinance No. XII of 1949. We must accordingly, hold that the impugned Ordinance cannot be held to be bad under Art. 14It should also be remembered in this connection that the impugned Ordinance is an emergency legislation of a temporary character, and,as observed in Dr. N. B. Khare v. The State of Delhi, 1950 S C R 519 at p. 526 : (A I R 1950 S C 211 at p. 214) (H), that is a factor to be taken into account in judging of its reasonableness. As already stated, the Ordinance has since come to an end, and has been replaced by a comprehensive tenancy law. In the circumstances, we are unable to hold that the impugned Ordinance is void as being in contravention of Art. 19 (1) (f).