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TMI Blog1955 (9) TMI 79X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... s been brought under settlement operations by a notification under section 64, the Settlement Officer or an Assistant Settlement Officer shall inspect every village in the local area, divide it into soil-classes and assessment circles, select rentrates for the area and publish them in such manner as may be prescribed. If objections to these proposals are received, he has to consider them, and submit his report to the Board of Revenue. The Board has the power to sanction the proposals with or without any modifications, and it has also the power to direct further enquiry into the matters. With a view to arriving at fair and equitable rates, the Settlement Officer is required under section 82 to have regard to the collection of rent and cesses in the nature of rent during the ten years preceding the settlement excluding such years as the Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare to be abnormal the average of the prices of agricultural produce during the same period, the nature of the crops grown and the quantity of the produce and their value. Section 82(2) provides that the rent rates shall not exceed one-third of, the value of the produce of unirrigated lands ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... State of Marwar, that the present State of Rajasthan comprises Marwar and 17 other States which have merged in it, and that as the Act, as it stands, is directed against the jagirdars in one area of the State and not the whole of it, it has become discriminatory and void. This contention is clearly untenable. What article 14 prohibits is the unequal treatment of persons similarly situated, and therefore before the petitioners can claim the protection of that article, it is incumbent on them to establish that the conditions which prevail in other areas in the State of Rajasthan are similar to those which obtain in Marwar. But of this, there has been neither allegation nor proof. On the contrary, it is stated by the respondents in para 10 of their statement that the tenants in the jagirs of Marwar were paying much more by way of rent and cesses than those in the Khalsa area of the State, that with a view to remove the inequality between the two classes of tenants within the State, a law was passed in 1943 providing for settlement of rent, and that again on 10-1-1947 another law was passed abolishing all cesses (lags) and fixing the maximum share of rent payable in kind. These ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... in support of the contention that article 14 has been infringed is that discrimination -must result from the settlement of rent being taken up only with reference to portions of the area to which the Act applies and not to the whole of it, because the rent rate is to be fixed on the basis of the average of the ten years preceding the settlement; and if the proceedings are started for different areas on different dates, that might result in different rates being fixed, and that would make for inequality such as is prohibited by article 14. We are unable to agree with this,.contention. Settlement operations can be conducted only by a specialised staff having technical knowledge and administrative experience, and it might be beyond the capacity of the State to undertake them for the whole area at one and the same time. To accede to the contention of the petitioners would, in effect, be to prevent the States from carrying on settlement operations. It was held by this Court in Biswambhar Singh v. The State of Orissa and other8([1954] S.C.R. 842, 845) and in Thakur Amar Singhji v. State of Rajasthan([1955] 2 S.C.R. 303) that a provision authorising the taking over of estates on differen ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... only with reference to rights to be exercised in future,. and that a law giving retrospective operation is consequently outside article 19(5). This contention rests on an assumption for which there is no basis. The question whether a law is valid under. Article 19 (5) can arise only when there is a violation of the fundamental right declared in article 19 (1) (f), and if the right to hold property imports, as we have held it does, only a fight to recover reasonable rent from cultivating tenants, that right cannot be held to have been invaded by a law fixing reasonable rent, even when it is retrospective in operation. If the rent fixed is reasonable with reference to a period subsequent to the settlement, it must be reasonable for the period prior to it as well, and if the settlement is not an encroachment on the rights of the holder as regards the future-and that is conceded-it cannot be an encroachment as regards the past. A consideration, therefore, of the question whether a law under article 19(5) should be regulatory' and whether a law with retrospective operation could be said to be regulatory would be wholly irrelevant for the purpose of the present controv ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... power conferred on the Court of Wards to take over the management of an estate if a landlord habitually infringes the right of a. tenant . Under the Act, the decision whether the condition aforesaid was satisfied depended on the subjective satisfaction of the Chief Commissioner., and that -was final and not liable to be questioned in civil courts. It was held that a power which could be exercised at the absolute discretion of the authority was an encroachment on the rights of a citizen to hold property under article 19(1)(f), and that it was not saved by article 19(5). But, in the present case, section 86 of the Act expressly lays down that if a Settlement Officer decides to bring rates into operation from a date earlier than the following 1st of July, it must be for reasons. There is no force in the contention that section 86 does not lay down under what circumstances such an order could be passed, because the very nature of the thing requires that a large discretion should be left to the authority. Discretion which is wide is not necessarily arbitrary. It was said that under section 233 of the Act the civil courts are debarred from enquiring into the reasonableness of the order ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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