The legal liability to surrender excess land is that of the person who filed the statement under S.85(2) or 85A(1) of the Act, and there is no provision for the continuation of proceedings after the death of such person. The legal heirs are under no legal obligation to account for the surplus land held by the deceased declarant, and their liability, if any, is confined to what is provided for under S.87 of the Act.

1. In this revision under S.103 of the Kerala Land Reforms Act, Act 1 of 1964 as amended by Act XXXV of 1969, hereinafter called the Act, the important question of law involved is whether the legal heirs of one who was, as on 1-1-1970, the date notified under S.83 of the Act, an adult unmarried person holding land in excess of the ceiling limit specified under S.82 of the Act, are under a legal liability, on his death, after the filing of the statement under S.85 (2) of the Act, but before the passing of the vesting order under S.86 (1) of the Act, to surrender the excess land as might have been determined had he lived till such time as the Taluk Land Board could have determined the extent and identity of the excess land, and passed an order vesting it in the Government. The Taluk Land Board has, by casting the burden on the legal heirs, in effect, answered the question in the affirmative, though this question of law, as such, was not specifically raised before it. Revision petitioner No.1 is one of the legal heirs of the person who had filed the statement under S.85 (2), hereinafter, for the sake of convenience, referred to as the 'declarant'. Revision petitioners Nos. 2 and 3 are persons who took assignment from the declarant 19 cents of land included in Part-D of the final order for surrender to the Government.

2. Sri O. V. Radhakrishnan, the counsel for the revision petitioners, submitted that the inhibition under S.83 of the Act against holding land in excess of the ceiling area is against a person, and with the death of that person that disability ceases to exist. According to him, the very caption of Chapter ill (which comprises S.81 to 98) of the Act indicates that the scheme of the Act with respect to the ceiling provisions is to impose restriction on ownership and possession of land in excess of the ceiling area held by persons, and to distribute the excess land available among the landless. He also emphasised that there is no provision in the whole of Chapter III suggesting any disability cast on the land owned by a person who was holding land in excess of the ceiling area. In this context the following observation of Narayana Pillai J, in Idicula v. "Taluk Land Board (1976 KLT. 550) has been cited by him:

"...The ceiling limit fixed in S.83 of the Act is as on 1-1-1970. It is open to persons holding lands within the ceiling limit to make valid transfers of them after 1-1-1970. As a result of such transfers there was the possibility of lands in excess of the ceiling area getting accumulated in the hands of a new class of people after 1-1-1970 also. That is sought to be prevented by S.87 of the Act. These provisions show that merely because a land was not excess land at some time in the past or in the possession of a particular person it need not be so on a later occasion or in the possession of another. Even in the possession of the same person it can be excess land on a later occasion To accept the argument of counsel for the revision petitioner would be to hold that if at some time in the pass a land was not excess land in the possession of one person it should remain exempted from the operation of the ceiling provisions of the Act for all time to come. That is not what is intended by and provided for in the Act."

He proceeded to argue that this decision would indicate that the excess land is correlated to a person, and what is excess land in the hands of one person may not be excess land in the hands of another; in other words, in accordance with the scheme of the Chapter, there is no such class of land as excess land absolutely without reference to a person in relation to whom it is excess.

3. Sri Radhkrishnan laid great emphasis on the point that till a vesting order is passed there is no divesting of the ownership of the land held by the declarant, and therefore, he died as the full owner of such land so much so that his legal heirs became the full owners of the lands left behind him without any disabi