Judgment

Patanjali Sastri J. - These petitions, which have been heard together, raise the common question whether the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, which was recently passed by the present provisional Parliament and purports to insert, inter alia, Arts. 31A and 31B in the Constitution of India is ultra vires and unconstitutional.

2. What led to that enactment is a matter of common knowledge. The political party now in power, commanding as it does a majority of votes in the several State legislatures as well as in Parliament, carried out certain measures of agrarian reform in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh by enacting legislation which may compendiously be referred to as Zemindary Abolition Acts. Certain zemindars, feeling themselves aggrieved, attacked the validity of those Acts in Courts of law on the ground that they contravened the fundamental rights conferred on them by Part III of the Constitution. The High Court at Patna held that the Act passed in Bihar was unconstitutional while the High Courts at Allahabad and Nagpur upheld the validity of the corresponding legislation in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh respectively. Appeals from those decisions are p