O.CHINNAPPA REDDY, J.

1. These writ petitions represent, perhaps, the final desperate attempt to stand up against the avalanche of land reforms initiated pursuant to the Directive Principles of State Policy. In these writ petitions, the vires of some of the provisions of the Haryana Ceiling on Land Holdings Act 1972 (Act XXVI of 1972) is in question. The Act received the assent of the President on 22.12.1972 and was published in the Official Gazette on 23.12.1972. The Act was included in the Ninth Schedule to the Constitution on 7.09.1974, and, thereby, it came under the protective umbrella of Art. 31-B of the Constitution and became immune from attack on the ground of inconsistency with or abridgement of any of the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution. However, on 9.09.1974, in Saroj Kumari V/s. State of Haryana, 1975 0 PunjLR 407 a Division Bench of this court, who apparently were unaware of the inclusion of the Act in the Ninth Schedule, struck down certain provisions of the Act on the ground that those provisions offended the rights guaranteed by Part III of the constitution. They held that the provisions were also not saved by Art.31-A of the Constitution as those provisions which mainly related to "Family Unit", could not be said to be in furtherance of cls. (b) and (c) of Art. 39 of the constitution. The Division Bench placed reliance on the decision of a Full Bench of this Court in Sucha Singh Bajwa V/s. State of Punjab, AIR 1974 Punj 162, where similar provisions of the Punjab Land Reforms Act had been struck down. The decision of the Full Bench in Sucha Singh Bajwa V/s. State of Punjab has since been reversed by the Supreme Court in Civil Appeal No. 1040 of 1976: (reported in AIR 1977 SC 915). The Supreme Court has held that the provisions of the Punjab Land Reforms Act are saved both by Art. 31-A and Art. 31-B of the Constitution. In view of the decision of the Supreme court and in view of the circumstances that the Division Bench did not notice the inclusion of the Haryana Act in the Ninth Schedule, the decision in Saroj Kumari V/s. State of Haryana cannot any longer be considered to be good law. But, it was argued by Shri Anand Swaroop that the Haryana Act was unworkable as some of its provisions were vague and mutually inconsistent. He submitted that such provisions as were vague, inconsistent and, therefore, unworkable should be struck down and that neither Art. 31-A nor Art. 31-B of the constitution would save such provisions. He drew our attention to the fact that in Saroj Kumari s case, the Division Bench, in addition to holding that the provisions of the Act offended the rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution, also gave the following additional reason for striking down the provisions of the Haryana Act:-

"Apart from the reasons stated in the Full Bench judgment in Sucha Singh Bajwa s case, the provisions of the Act relating to the permissible area of the family suffer from the vice of vagueness and uncertainty and being incomplete and unworkable deserve to be struck down."

We nut a straight question to Shri Anand Swaroop whether, apart from Saroj Kumari s case, he could cite any judicial precedent or academic authority to support the submission that the provisions of a statute could be declared ultra vires on such grounds, Shri Anand Swaroop frankly confessed there was none. He, however, relied on the analogy of the situation arising out of a part of the statute being struck down as unconstitutional, where the whole of the statute has to be struck down if what remains cannot be enforced without alterations and modifications of the statute. We do not think that the situation is in the least analogous. The principle of severability in application or separability in enforcement has been recognised by the Supreme Court when dealing with the contention that a law must be declared wholly void if it is constitutionally invalid in part. It has been held that if the valid a