Case: Rameshwar And Ors Vs. Jot Ram &amp; Ors

2. Teja, the landlord, was admittedly a largelandownerunder whom there were three tenants. Each of them applied for purchase of ownership under s. 18(1) of the Act. The Assistant Collector, who is the primary authority, found them eligible, fixed the price and the installments of payment, and they duly deposited the first installment. The statutory consequence of such deposit was that title to the property vested in the tenants on that date. All these events took place in the early 60s. Had the scheme of agrarian reform in the Punjab been simple and had the virtue of early finality so necessary in such a measure been present, the law would have operated with speed and changed the rural lands cape radically, instead of provoking a heavy run ofg litigation. Section 24 of the Act has had this unwitting effect. Too many tiers of quasi judicial review, too long at each deck and in a system which is slowmoving, tempt disappointed parties to litigate to the disastrous end. Such a statutory creation, calculated to give ultimate justice, is like a Frankensteins monster, the very prolonged over judicialised litigative engine, bleeding justice to death. A legislature, with care and concern for the agrarian community should be vigilant enough to design a quick and competent legal engineeringt by contrast in mostm laws blessing the rural poor. And it is noteworthy that legal battles are fought largely before Collectors, Commissioners and Financial Commissioners and then the writ chapter begins. This litigation, it is worthy of note, began before the Collector in 1961/62. A fundamental assessment of the comparative economic and social costs ofd determination procedure would have induced the legislature to reduce institutional levels of adjudication. This is by the way, although we strongly recommend that the legislatures do pay serious attention to producing an early termination tom reordering by a mammoth and immediateg instrumentality.C.As

Court's reasoning:
Of course, a tenant of a small has no right to purchase the land. But, in the present case, thelandowneradmittedly was a largelandownerat the time the tenants applied for purchase. Section 18(1)5. It is absolutely plain that on the deposit of the first installment of the purchase price, the tenant shall be deemed to have become the owner of the land. I n the present case, all these happenings had resulted in the respondents becoming the ownersWe see no difficulty in answering this question against the appellant, but, in view of the persistent submission based upon a few rulings of this Court, the Federal Court and the High Courts, made by counsel for the appellant, we may as well consider the question of law , adopting an interpretative attitude which will further and not frustrate the legislative will in case there are alternative choices for the Court. Of course, a construction which will promote predictability of results, maintenance of reasonable orderliness, simplification of the judicial task advancement by the Court of the purpose of the legislation and the judicial preference for what it regards as the sounder rule of law as between competing ones, must find favour with us. A plain reading of s. 18, without reference to consideration of subsequent events at the appellate level, yields the easy and only conclusion that the rights of parties are determined on the date they come to Court and what is an insurmountable obstacle to any other construction is that once the deposit is made the title to the land vests in the tenant. Agrarian reform law affects a considerable number of people and to keep rights uncertain over a long stretch of time till appeals and reviews and revisions and other processes are exhausted, is to inject unpredictability of results, for it is quite on the cards that a landlord may die in the long course of litigation, or other events may happen at later stages beyond the trial Court. Can rights of parties fluctuate with such uncertain contingencies ? If so, stabilization of, so vital to the new pattern of agrarian relations, will be postponed for a long time. Is not the judicial task simplified by adopting the golden rule that the rights of parties must be determined when they seek justice and not when the last Court has had its last say, long years after the litigation was initiated ? A system of orderliness about rights in land will result from this approach. More than all, the sounder rule of law as between rival claims to consideration of, or indifference to, subsequent events is surely that which excludes the later event factually or legally. Such a reading of the statutory scheme rhymes well with rapid agrarian reform contemplated by the framers.The philosophy of the approach which commends itself to us is that a litigant who seeks justice in a perfect legal system gets it when he asks for it. Rut because human institutions of legal justice function slowly, and in quest of perfection, appeals and reviews at higher levels are provided for, the end product comes considerably late. But these higher Courts pronounce upon the rights of parties as the facts stood when the first Court was first approached. The delay of years flows from the infirmity of the judicial institution and this protraction of the Court machinery shall prejudice no one. Actus curiae nemin em gravabit ("An act of the court shall prejudice non fort &Maxwell.). Precedential support invoked by the appellants counsel also lets him down provided we scan the fact situation in each of those cases and the legal propositions therein laid down8. The realism of our processual justice bends our jurisprudence to mould, negate or regulate reliefs in the light of exceptional developments having a material and equitable import, occurring during the pendency of the litigation so that the Court may not stultify itself by granting what has become meaningless or does not, by a myopic view, miss decisive alterations ins or legal positions and drive parties to fresh litigation whereas relief can be given right here. The broad principle, so stated, strikes a chord of sympathy in a court of good conscience. But a seeming virtue may prove a treacherous vice unless judicial perspicacity, founded onrules, studies the plan of the statute, its provisions regarding subsequent changes and the possible damage to the social programme of the measure if later events are allowed to unsettle speedy accomplishment of ag of the land system which is the soul of this which enactment. No processual equity can be permitted to sabotage a cherished reform, nor individual hardship thwart social justice. this wider perspective explains the rulings cited on both sides and the law of subsequent events on pending actionsThe impact of subsequent happenings may now be spelt out. First, its bearing on the right of action, second, on the nature of the relief and third, on its impotence to create or destroy substantive rights. Where the nature of the relief as originally sought, has become obsolete or unserviceable or a new form of relief will be more efficacious on account of developments subsequent to the suit or even during the appellate stage, it is but fair that the relief is moulded, varied ord in the light of dated factsSubsequent events in the course of the case cannot be constitutive of substantive rights enforceable in that very litigation except in a narrow category (later spelt out) but may influence the equitable jurisdiction to mould reliefs. Conversely, where rights have already vested in a party, they cannot be nullified or negated by subsequent events save where there is a change in the law and it is made applicable at any stageLikewise, where the right to the remedy depends, under the statute itself, on the presence or absence of certain basic facts at the time the relief is to in ultimately granted, the Court, even in appeal, can take note of such supervening facts with fundamental impact. Venkateswarlu (supra), read in its statutory setting, fall s in this category. Where a cause o action is deficient but later events have made up the deficiency, the Court may, in order to avoid multiplicity of litigation, permit amendment and continue the proceeding, provided no prejudice is caused to th e other side. All these are done only in exceptional situations and just cannot be done if the statute, on which the legal proceeding is based, inhibits, by its scheme or otherwise, such change in cause of action or relief. The primary concern of the court is to implement the justice of the legislation. Rights vested by virtue of a statute cannot be divested by this equitable doctrine (See Chokalingam Chetty: 54 Mad.L.J. 88 P.C.)9. One may as well add that while taking cautious judicial cognizance of events,evenfor thelimited and exceptional purposes explained earlier, no court will countenance a party altering, by his own manipulation. a change in situation and plead for relief on the altered basis10. The apparently divergent strains of the several decisions has persuaded us to dilate on this branch of processual jurisprudence. Let us now apply the law to the circumstances here. The legislation we are interpreting relates to agrarian reform, regarded as the vital base to build a new social order. The Constitution has stressed not merely the supreme significance of this rural transformation but thed implementation thereof,evengoing to the extreme extent of walling off litigative assaults on constitutionality by creation of the Ninth Schedule and the like. Moreover , the Act itself takes care tot future accumulation of lands or motivated slimming process by transfers, interfering with the scheme of surplus pool and settlement of ejected tenants and the like. Peasant proprietorship is a cherished goal of the statute and so it provides thatevenon the payment of the first installment of the price the tenant gets the title of the landlord. To hold that, if the landlord dies at some distant date after the title has vested in the tenant, the statutory process would be reversed if by such death, his many children, on division, will be converted into small landholders, is to upset the day of reckoning visualized by the Act and to make the vesting provision a teasing illusion, a formal festschrift to agrarian reform, not a flaming programme of now and here. These surrounding facts drive home the need not to allow futurism, , in a dawdling litigative scene, to foul the quick legislative goals.Moreover, the right of the respondents is fixed under s. 18(1 ) and (4) and that cannot be uprooted by supervening circumstances. We are not called upon to mould the relief but to reject the right. We are not asked to avoid multiplicity of suits but tot and thus stultify the agrarian law. We are not required to permit the appellate authority tos the facts as they stood when the action was brought (that is part of appellate power) but to project the landholders subsequent death backwards to refuse a right already acquired. Ak camera, in this context, frustrates forensic objectives. Individual misfortune may be real but larger social changes will claim martyrs in law and in fact. How can we miss the sublime imp act of the Passion of Christfor theRedemption of Mankind ? The great fact is that, if uniformly relentlessly and swiftly enforced, neither landlord nor tenant can keep more than the permissible area. That is the equity and equality of this agrarian lawThe primary fact which projects this point Of law is as to whether the purchased land is irrigated ord for purposes of valuation. We are relieved from the need to investigate the implications of the issue because the factual foundation about the nature of the land in question was never put in issue nor considered in the High Court. Thus the appellants have missed the bus and we cannot hear them on a question raised de novo and demanding enquiry into facts not raised at the