ORDER :

1. Leave granted.

2. Heard learned Senior Counsel for the parties and carefully perused the material placed on record.

3. The controversy herein has emanated from the applications moved by the respondent-landowners for the conversion of their ‘paddy land’ into ‘non-agricultural purpose land’. It appears that most of the respondents had moved the above-mentioned applications before the Revenue Divisional Officer under Clause 6 of the Kerala Land Utilisation Order, 1967. Some of these applications were allowed granting the conversions, while some remained pending. Meanwhile, the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland (Amendment) Bill, 2018 was passed to amend the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2008 (for short, 2008 Act’). The amended Act came into force w.e.f 30.12.2017, as is evident from Section 1(2) of the Amendment Act, which reads as follows:

“1(2) It shall be deemed to have come into force on the 30th day of December, 2017.”

4. The dispute eventually arose when the statutory authorities rejected the pending claims for conversion of land to non-agricultural purposes primarily on the premise that the new parameters introduced through the 2018 Amendme