Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J. : - These two appeals by the State of Haryana challenged the High Court s approach to an interpretation of two crucial provisions of a land reforms law, namely, Sections 10-A and 18 of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act (X of 1953) 1953 (for short called "the Act"). Counsel for the appellants complains that if the view upheld by the High Court of subordinating Sections 10-A to 18 were not upset by this Court, large landholders may extricate their surplus lands in excess of the ceiling set, through legal loopholes, such as have been practised in the present case. If make-believe deals and collusive proceedings, he argues, may maneouvre through the legal net cast by sec.10-A of the Act interdicting alienations and orders which diminish the surplus pool intended for re-settlement by the State of ejected tenants, the agrarian reform measure would be reduced to a paper tiger or sicio-economic eyewash. Certainly, land reforms are no basic to the national reconstruction of the new order envisaged by the Constitution that the issue raised in this case deserves our anxious attention. We have to bear in mind the activist, though inarticulate, major premise of st