Judgement

V. R. KRISHNA IYER J.:- These two appeals turn on the construction of Section 19-B of the Punjab Security of Land Tenures Act, (Act X of 1953) (for short, the Act). This legislation was enacted to bring about an agrarian reordering so pivotal to the progress of our rural economy. Haryana, happily a granary of our country, is one of the States where land reform laws are likely to generate great changes by banishing big concentration of Nature s bounty in a few feudal hands, creating an enthusiastic sense of distributive justice and exploiting the productive potential of land by the possessive passion of the landless masses. So strategic is land reform that special constitutional concern has been shown for this programme. Naturally the State enacted the Act whereby ceiling on landownership was set, surplus lands were taken over for settling ejected tenants and others and peasant proprietorship created. The scheme of the Act with which we are concerned is fairly simple and somewhat scientific, although its language, what with frequent amendments dovetailed from time to time, has made for ambiguity, obscurity, marginal inconsistency and a rich crop of litigation. Indeed, the c