HARRIES, C.J. :- The petitioners in these two cases had applied to this Court under Art. 228 of the Constitution praying that the records of two suits pending before a learned Subordinate Judge at Alipore should be transferred to this Court for the decision of certain constitutional points which were said to arise in the suits. The records were in due course transferred to this Court and this Bench heard the parties on the constitutional questions involved in the suits.

2. The suits arose out of acquisitions of property made by the West Bengal Government under the West Bengal Land Development and Planning Act, 1948. It was suggested on behalf of the opposite parties that the whole of this Act was ultra vires and if such was not the case that three provisions of the Act were ultra vires. This Bench eventually held in a judgment delivered on March 22, 1951 that the whole of the Act was not ultra vires. It further held that a portion of S. 8 proviso (b) of the Act was ultra vires, but as the offending portion was severable from the remainder of proviso (b) of S. 8 the whole proviso was not ultra vires.

3. It was further contended that two other portions of S. 8 of this Act were