The crucial date for determining the majority of a son of a landowner for a separate unit under the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1972, is the appointed day of 24th January, 1971.

S.S.SANDHAWALIA, J.

1. Whether the crucial date for determining the majority of a son of a landowner (and his consequent eligibility for a separate unit of land) is the appointed day of the 24th of January, 1971, under the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1972, - admittedly is the sole, though meaningful, question which arises for determination in this set of sixteen writ petitions.

2. As is apparent from the above, question is primarily legal and the facts, therefore, pale into relevant (sicrelative ?) insignificance. It, therefore, suffices to make a brief reference to those in C.W.P. No. 3555 of 1978 (Naginder Singh V/s. The State of Haryana). The petitioner therein claims to have been born on the 24th of April, 1954, and it is averred that his father owned considerable agricultural land in various village estates. The Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act, 1972, came into force on the 23rd of December, 1972, by publication in the gazette of that date. By virtue of its provisions the father of the petitioner was entitled to select a separate unit of permissible area for each of his adult sons. The claim of the petitioner is that with effect from the aforesaid date of enforcement there arose a vested right to a separate unit of permissible area which could be claimed for each adult son at the time of making the selection under Section 9(2) of the Act. The petitioner claims that on this material date he had attained adulthood. However, the respondent-State had issued instructions, annexure-P.1, for filling in the declaration form wherein in paragraph 7 it was prescribed that the material date for determining the majority of the sons of a landowner was the 24th of January, 1971. The petitioner s grievance is that in the absence of a specific provision in the Act, the respondent-State has no authority to prescribe the aforesaid date for determining the age of majority and thus to divest him of the right accruing to him under the statute. The aforesaid annexure-P.1 has, therefore, been challenged as patently unreasonable and in violation of the petitioner s fundamental right to hold property under Article 19 of the Constitution of India.

3. It calls for pointed notice that in many of the writ petitions a substantial part of the challenge was also levelled against Section 18(7), (8) and (9) of the Act which lay down the pre-conditions for presenting an appeal against the order of the prescribed authority under the Act. However, at the time of the hearing it was frankly conceded that this aspect of the case now stood concluded against the petitioners by the exhaustive Division Bench judgement of this Court in Sri Chand V/s. State of Haryana, 1978-80 Pun LR 660. No reference to this aspect of the averments in the writ petitions is hence called for.

4. The material part of annexure-P.1, the impugned instructions, which is under challenge is as follows :-

"In column 3 of Part I the ages of the persons named as on 24-1-1971 should be given. The entry in the births and deaths register and, failing that, in the School Leaving Certificates shall, in the first instance, be accented as proof of the age. The Medical certificate and the oral evidence will be entertained only on proof of the existence of these entries."

Now the core of the argument on behalf of the petitioners is that the terminus for determining the age of majority of the son of a landowner is the actual date of filing the declaration under Section 9(1) of the Act. The date so originally prescribed (within three months wherefrom the landowner was obliged to file the declarations) was the 15th of April, 1976, which appears to have been later extended by one month. In the alternative it was argued that at the highest the crucial date cannot be set back beyond 23rd of December, 1972. when the Act came into force.

5. Inevitably the argument here must revolve around the relevant provisions of the statute and it is, therefore, best to reproduce these at the very outset