The Madras Land Encroachment Act, 1905, particularly Sections 6 and 7, does not violate Article 14 of the Constitution as it provides sufficient guidance for the exercise of discretion by the Collector or Tahsildar, and the availability of a civil court remedy under Section 14 of the Act ensures that the aggrieved party has access to an independent judicial review of the executive action taken under the Act.

( 1 ) BECAUSE of a common ground urged by all the parties for impeaching the provisions of the Madras Land Encroachment Act. 1905 all the writ petitions and Writ Appeal have been set done together for hearing. The statute and more particularly Section 6 and 7 are called in question as being violate of concept of equality underlying Article 14 of the Constitution.

( 2 ) IT is not necessary to set out the facts that have given rise to the several writ petitions because the argument has been confined to the preliminary question of the constitutional validity of the Act.

( 3 ) STATED in bare outline, the contention is that the Madras Land Encroachment Act (the provisions of which are made applicable to the Telangana region too) provides a remedy of Government within the meaning of the Act and that within the meaning of the Act, and that this remedy is more drastic and prejudicial to the party concerned than the common law process in a court of law and that the choice of the remedies is left to the arbitrary and unguided discretion of the Collector or Tahsildar. The provisions of the Act leave it to the sweet will or pleasure of the officers concerned to use or not to use the harsh and drastic process under the impugned Act by picking out some persons or properties accorded that discrimination inevitably arises inasmuch as there are two available procedures, one more drastic or prejudicial to the party concerned than the other and there is no guiding principles enacted by the law which enables discriminatory selection among persons similarly situated; the choice of remedy is dependent t solely on the arbitrary will of the authority.

( 4 ) THE counsel appearing for the petitioners or appellants placed strong reliance on the decision of the Supreme Court in N. I. Caterers (P) Ltd. v. State of Punjab. AIR 1967 SC 1581 where the question incontroversy was in regard to the validity of the Punjab Public premises and Land (eviction and Rent Recovery) Act, 1959. The decision of the majority of the bench upheld the contention that Section 5 of the Punjab Act refereed t above was unconstitutional. By applying the harsher and more drastic provisions of the Act in preference to the common law remedy of a suit, the Collector could evict a person found to be in unauthorized occupation of public premises.

( 5 ) SHELAT,. J. who delivered the opinion of the majority of the Court said;"the procedure under Section 5 is obviously more drastic and prejudicial than the one under the Civil Procedure Code where the litigants can get the benefit of a trial by as ordinary Court dealing with the ordinary law of the land with the right of appeal recession etc. ass against the person who is proceeded against under S. 5 of the Act as his case would be disposed of bean executive officer of the Government. whose decision rests on his mere satisfaction subject no doubt to any appeal but before another executive officer, viz. , the Commissioner. "it was held Section 5 of that Act confers an additional remedy and provided two alternative remedies to the Government. The majority of the Bench observed. ""in leaving it to the discretion of the Collector to resort to one of them and to pick and choose some of those inoculation of public properties and premises for the application of the more drastic procedure under Section 5 that section lent itself open to the charge of discrimination and as being violate of Article 14. "accordingly Section 5 was declared to be void.

( 6 ) THE pronouncement in the Supreme Court in the above case (AIR 1967 SC 1581) has been strongly relied upon by Shri P. Babul Reddy and Shri. P. A. Chowdhary. The Principal Government Pleader, on the other hand, submitted that the several provisions of the Punjab Act when juxtaposed with the provisions of the impugned Act, reveal striking features or dissimilarity and that there is a fundamental divergence in as much as the Punjab Act invests the executive decisions made under the special enactment with

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