V. Dharmalinga Moopanar vs Anusamba Bi-Trust and Others

Rajagopala Ayyangar, J.—These petitions raise for consideration a very interesting and important question as to the scope of the Tanjore Tenants and Pannaiyal Protection Act, 1952.

I shall first refer to the facts in Writ Petition No. 487 of 1955. The tenant who is the Petitioner here was allowed into possession for the cultivation season of fasli 1363 under a lease deed, dated 14th June 1953, whose duration was one year. On the expiry of this term, the Petitioner was threatened with eviction by the landowner. He, thereupon, applied u/s 13(1) of the Act to the Conciliation Officer for determining the dispute between himself and the landowner.

An objection was raised by the landowner that the tenant having been let into possession after 23rd August 1952, when the Tanjore Tenants and Pannaiyal Protection Act XIV of 1952, came into force, the act was not applicable to determine his rights and the petition u/s 13 was not competent and that the Conciliation Officer had no jurisdiction to adjudicate upon the dispute. The contention was that Madras Act XIV of 1952, conferred certain statutory rights only upon two classes of cultivating tenants (i) those who had been in possession on the first of December 1951, but had lost possession before 23rd August 1952, and who were entitled to be restored to possession and to the benefit of the statutory terms of tenancy u/s 6 of .the Act and (ii) those who were in possession on 23rd August 1952. On this basis it was urged that the rights of persons who were inducted as tenants for the purpose of cultivation after 23rd August 1952, would be governed by their respective contracts in the light of the provisions of the Transfer of Property Act and that they would not be entitled to the advantages or the benefit of the machinery provided by the Madras Act XIV of 1952. This interpretation of the provisions was accepted by the Conciliation Officer and on appeal by the Revenue Court and it is the correctness of this view that is challenged in this petition under Article 226 of the Constitution. As the Tribunals below have declined jurisdiction on their interpretation of the relevant statutory provisions it is clear that if the construction were erroneous the Petitioner would be entitled to have those orders quashed and an enquiry directed.

I shall now consider the scope of the legislative provisions with reference to the terms of the relevant sections. Before doing so, I shall have to put out of account a circumstance which has been mentioned by the Conciliation Officer and which formed part of his reasoning, based upon the historical background which led to the passing of the Madras Act XIV of 1952. This background was derived from the preamble to the Act. The preamble recites that in the district of Tanjore relations between landowners and their agents on the one hand and tenants and farm laborers on the other had become strained resulting in the displacement of tenants and that this rendered it necessary for the Legislature to intervene. From this statement, the inference drawn by the Tribunals below was that the Act was designed to protect only those who had previously thereto suffered at the hands of the landowners or those who being then in possession were likely to suffer from such action and that the tenants who came in later were outside the purview of the legislation. I Consider this reasoning unsafe and not capable of leading to any definite result, for, the primary purpose of the legislation was to put fetters upon the contractual rights of the landholder, which according to the framers of the enactment, were being misused.

There was no reason why such action should not be restrained or those fetters imposed for the protection of an identical class of persons emerging at a later date. It was not as if the Legislature singled out a particular category of individuals and conferred rights on them intending to deny to others, similar rights, notwithstanding that their economic situation and their position vis a vis the landlord were exactly the same and they occupied an identical position in the country''s economy. It is for this reason that I am putting aside as nearly irrelevant the light sought to be derived from the words of the preamble and this is precisely why I consider that it is necessary to advert primarily to the language of the operative provisions for determining the scope of the enactment.

Another line of reasoning of the Conciliation Officer and the Revenue Court for arriving at their conclusion was based on a construction of Section 6. They held that Section 6 and the Act as a whole contemplated and provided benefits only to two classes of tenants (i) those who were in possession on 1st December 1951, but not in possession on 23rd August 1952; and (ii) those in possession of their holding on 23rd August 1952.

A close examination of Section 6, however, would show that it provides for three sets of cultivating tenants : (a) those who were in possession on 1st December 1951, and who continued to remain in possession on the date of the Act-these having subject to the provisions of the Act, a right to continue till 1957-58, (b) those who were in possession on 1st December 1951 but not in possession on 23rd August 1952. This class had a right to be restored to possession of the land evicting even a cultivating tenant let in meanwhile and (c) those who were in possession during the agricultural year 1950-51, but not in possession on i1st December 1951, having a qualified right to be restored to possession, the qualification being that no cultivating tenant was let into possession of the holding before 1st December 1951. These are the only three classes of tenants for whom specific provision is made by Section 6. If the matter rested there, the case of the cultivating tenants who were not in possession during 1950-51, but came in subsequently would appear to have been unprovoked. In other words those who not having been in possession on the dates specie in sections 6(1) and (2) were in possession on 23rd August 1952, would not be protected. This should suffice to indicate that the Tribunals below are in error in holding that Section 6 had provided for the two categories of cultivating tenants I have mentioned earlier.

In my judgment the proper way of reading the enactment is to regard Section 7 as the pivotal provision in relation to cultivating tenants notwithstanding that it factually occurs after Section 6 and to read Section 6 as a rider to or an extension of this main provision in relation to a defined anterior period. Section 8 is really a part of Section 7 defining the quantum of the statutory fair rent, the function of Section 10 being to set out the obligations of tenants and the legal consequences of breaches on their part together with the machinery for the enforcement thereof.

The matter may be put in slightly different form in the following analysis : Section 7 provides the statutory terms on which every cultivating tenant shall hold the land. The tense used is present and the present tense does not exclude the prospective. Cultivating tenant is defined in Section 2(d) to mean a person who contributes his own physical labour . . . in the cultivation of any land belonging to another under a tenancy agreement, to set out only the words which are material in the present context. The terms upon which a cultivating tenant of this type is to hold the lands are to be found in the several sub clauses (a) to (g) of Section 7. Section 8 is explanatory of the term as to rent in Section 7. Section 8 makes provision for written evidence of the tenancy. The obligations cast on tenants on whom rights are conferred by Section 7 are enforced by the provision as to eviction in the event of their non-observance (vide Section 10). If the opening words of Section 7 stood without further statutory expansion, they would not include persons who had once cultivated the lands but had ceased to do so on 23rd August 1952, but would take in all cultivating tenants then on the lands, and in my opinion, also every cultivating tenant who might be inducted thereafter, for, there are no words in Section 7 excluding the latter class. The words Every cultivating tenant with which this Section opens are, however, incapable of comprehending any persons who were not cultivating tenants on the date of the enactment for even the definition of a cultivating tenant in Section 2(d) uses only the present tense and would not, therefore, include a cultivating tenant who had cultivated land before the enactment. There were, however, classes of cultivating tenants who had once cultivated but had ceased to cultivate by reason of what the law considered to be an unjust eviction. It was to meet this special class of cases that Section 6 was designed. This provision brought within its fold cultivating tenants who were in possession of the lands in the agricultural season of 1950-51, or on the first of December 1951 projecting thus, pro tanto the Act backwards to the date named. The other Sub-sections of Section 6 provided that machinery by which the rights of these quondam cultivating tenants could be enforced as also the conditions subject to which they could be granted their rights. This in brief is the scheme of the enactment.

The opening words of Section 7, viz., Every cultivating tenant afford statutory protection to every cultivating tenant and a tenant is not the less a cultivating tenant within these words because he was not in possession of the land on 23rd August 1952. The language employed is perfectly general and is by no means restricted to conferring rights upon cultivating tenants in possession on any particular date. Though there is a presumption against a statute having retrospective operation without specific provision thereof and that is the function of Section 6; there is no presumption that a statute applies only to a state of things on the date of the Act and not prospectively. If a person were a cultivating tenant as defined in Section 2(d) the statute in Section 7 sets out the conditions which govern his tenure. If the definition of cultivating tenant in Section 2(d), which also uses the present tense, were read into the opening words of Section 7, that Section would read :

Every person who contributes his own physical labour . . . in the cultivation of any land belonging to another and under a tenancy agreement, express or implied, shall hold the land on the following terms.

No difficulty is caused in treating this as including cultivating tenants inducted subsequent to 23rd August 1952, by reason of the provision as to duration of the tenancy, because u/s 7(f) of the Act statutory tenancy is terminated by efflux of time only at the end of the period of five years referred to in Section 6, which means that it lasts until the commencement of the agricultural year 1957-58. This construction which, in my judgment, is the only reasonable one of the enactment, is not contradicted by the language of the other sections. For instance, sections 8, 9 and 10 on their language would apply as much to cultivating tenants in possession of their holdings on 23rd August 1952 as to those who were inducted subsequently. Apart from this, there is no reason why, when the statute enacts terms in respect of persons who are cultivating tenants between 1952-53 and 1957-58, persons who come in at an intermediate period of time should not have the benefit of the statutory terms subject of course, to the termination of the statutory term after 1957-58.

This construction is more than reinforced by a reference to the corresponding provisions in relation to pannaiyals who are the other class of persons engaged in agriculture for whom parallel provisions are made. Take for instance Section it which determines the fair wage payable to pannaiyals. It cannot be that these wages could be demanded only by the pannaiyals actually in employment on 23rd August 1952, but that in the case of persons employed subsequently, the contractual rate is enforceable even though this might be less than what is provided u/s 11. Section 12 also could not in its language be restricted in its application to pannaiyals in employment under a particular landholder on the date of the enactment but it would apply equally to govern the relations of such agricultural laborers whose employment under any particular landowner commenced after 23rd August 1952.

If the above is the reasonable construction of the provisions contained in sections 11 to 12, the other set of sections 7 to 10 should receive a similar interpretation in which event alone they could harmonies with each other and constitute an integrated piece of legislation. If so read it follows that Section 13 which is common to tenants and pannaiyals and would be read as clothing the Conciliation Officer with authority to decide disputes not merely between persons who are landowner and cultivating tenant or pannaiyal on the date of the Act but also those with reference to persons between whom such relationship springs into existence after the enactment. The perfectly general language of Section 10 which prohibits evictions of cultivating tenants otherwise than for reasons specified in that Section making no distinction between the tenants restored to possession u/s 6 and those who were cultivating tenants on the date of the enactment as also those who might be inducted later on would appear to reinforce the conclusion which I have drawn from an independent examination of the other provisions of the enactment.

In my judgment, the Tanjore Tenants and Pannaiyals Protection Act was applicable to and governed the rights of the present applicant before the Conciliation Officer,. The applicant was entitled to have his application considered and adjudicated upon by the Conciliation Officer u/s 13 of the Act. The orders of the Conciliation Officer and the Revenue Court refusing to do so are, therefore, set aside, the rule being made absolute.

The Conciliation Officer will proceed with the application and dispose of it in accordance with law. In view of the point raised not being covered by any earlier authority of this Court, there will be no order as to costs of this writ petition.