N. Chandrasekhara Aiyar JUDGMENT
M.C. Mahajan, J.
Petition No. 166 of 1951.
1. This is a petition under article 32 of the Constitution of India by Shri Visweshwar Rao, zamindar and proprietor of Ahiri zamindari, an estate as defined in section 2 (3) of the Central Provinces Land Revenue Act, II of 1917, and situated in tehsil Sironcha, district Chanda (Madhya Pradesh), for the enforcement of his fundamental right to property under article 31(1) of the Constitution by the issue of an appropriate writ or a direction to the respondent State restraining it from disturbing his possession of the estate, and eighty malguzari villages situate in the Garchiroli tehsil of the same district.
2. The petitioner and his ancestors have been owning and enjoying these properties in full proprietary right for several generations past. On the 5th April, 1950, the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly enacted an Act called the Madhya Pradesh Abolition of Proprietary Rights Act. The Act received the assent of the President of India on the 22nd January, 1951, and was published in the Madhya Pradesh Gazette on the 26th January, 1951, as Act I of 1951. By a notification in a gazette extraordinary issued on the 27th January, 1951, the Madhya Pradesh Government fixed 31st March, 1951, as the date of vesting of the estates under section 3 of the Act. The petitioner thus was to lose his estate and lands on the 31st March, 1951. On the 9th March, 1951, i.e., before the vesting date, he presented the present application to this court for the issue of appropriate writs against the Government prohibiting it from taking possession of his properties. It was alleged that the Madhya Pradesh Act, I of 1951 was unconstitutional and void and infringed the fundamental rights of the petitioner in a variety of ways.
3. For a proper appreciation of the ground on which the validity of the Act is being challenged it is necessary to set out the relevant provisions of the Act and to state the facts which led to this enactment.
4. Madhya Pradesh is a composite State, comprising the Central Provinces, Berar and the merged territories. By an agreement of merger made between the rules of States and the Dominion of India dated the 15th December, 1947, certain territories which at one time were under the Indian States Agency and were held by these rulers were in........