A law which has been validly and competently made by the legislature, does not become invalid because of the legislature being deprived of that competency by constitutional amendment which is not retrospective.

JUDGMENT - GINWALA A.A., J.: - As said Krishna Iyer, J., in (Dattatraya Govind Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra)1, A.I.R. 1977 S.C. 915, legal challenges to the constitutionality of agrarian transformation die hard in our divided society. The present appeal and several other similar appeals and writ petitions pending in this Court, in which certain provisions of the Maharashtra Agricultural Lands (Ceiling on Holdings) Act, 1961 (hereinafter called as the Principle Act), as it stood amended upto the end of 1975, (called herein as Amended Ceiling Act), are challenge as violative of Article 300-A of the Constitution, bring home this observation. In order to understand the controversy raised now it will be convenient at this stage to take a quick survey of the legislative and judicial history of this piece of legislation.

2. The principal Act which came into force on 26-1-1962, imposed ceiling on agricultural holdings in this State and provided for acquisition of land held in excess of the ceiling and for distribution of land so acquired. Maharashtra Act 21 of 1975 effected radical and drastic amendments in the principal Act by lowering the ceiling and by introducing the concept of artificial family unit for the purpose of determining the extent of ceiling area. Maharashtra Act 47 of 1975 and 2 of 1976 carried out some more amendments in the principal Act with which we are not concerned in these appeals. The principle Act and the Amending Acts have been included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution by the Seventeenth, Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Constitution Amendment Acts, thus immunising, these Acts from challenges on the ground of violation of Articles 14, 19 and 31 of the Constitution.

3. The constitutional validity of the Amended Ceiling Act was assailed in this Court in a bunch of 2660 writ petitions. By its judgment rendered in (Vithal Rao Udhaorao v. State of Maharashtra)2, A.I.R. 1977 Bom. 99, a Division Bench of this Court repelled all the challenges. It held that the provisions of the said Acts were not open to challenge as violating Articles 14, 19 and 31 as they had been placed in the Ninth Schedule and because of the promulgation of emergency. It rejected the challenge to the validity of Article 31-B by holding that far from damaging the basic structure of the Constitution, the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951 under which that article was inserted in the constitution, fortified that structure by subserving a fundamental constitutional purpose. The provisions contained in the Amended Ceiling Act pertaining to the concept of family unit were challenged before this Court in those petitions on the ground that they were beyond the purview of Article 31-A. The Division Bench rejected this contention also on the ground that those provisions formed a part of an integral scheme of agrarian reforms under which large agricultural holdings had to be reduced and the surplus land distributed amongst landless and other persons.

4. In the appeals preferred to the Supreme Court against this decision of this Court, the only question which was canvassed before that Court was as to whether the Amended Ceiling Act in so far as it created an artificial concept of family unit is in conflict with the second proviso to Clause (1) of Article 31-A and if so whether it is protected under Article 31-B. The Supreme Court by its judgment in Dattatraya Govind v. State of Maharahstra (supra) answered both these petitions against the appellants and rejected the appeals and special leave petitions pending before it.

5. At the time when the Supreme Court delivered the aforesaid judgment, the proclamation of emergency was in operation. On revocation of that proclamation, the appellants filed petitions before that Court for review of the said judgment on the ground that several contentions which were otherwise open to them for assailing the constitutional validity of the said Act could not be made because of the emergency and that they shou

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