TMI Blog1975 (9) TMI 180X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ound them eligible, fixed the price and the instalments of payment, and they duly deposited the first instalment. The statutory consequence of such deposit was that title to the property vested in the tenants on that date. All these events took place in the early '60s. Had the scheme of agrarian reform in the Punjab been simple and had the virtue of early finality so necessary in such a measure been present, the law would have operated with speed and changed the rural landscape radically, instead of provoking a heavy run of never-ending litigation. Section 24 of the Act has had this unwitting effect. Too many tiers of quasi judicial review, too long at each deck and in a system which is slow- moving, tempt disappointed parties to litigate to the disastrous end. Such a statutory creation, calculated to give ultimate justice, is like a Frankenstein's monster, the very prolonged over judicialised litigative engine, bleeding justice to death. A legislature, with care and concern for the agrarian community should be vigilant enough to design a quick and competent legal engineering project-absent by contrast in most land-reform laws blessing the rural poor. And it is noteworthy t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... the land. Section 18(4) (a) and (b) may, at this stage, be read: 18(4) (a) The tenant shall be competent to pay the purchase price either in a lump sum or in six monthly instalments not exceeding ten in the manner prescribed. (b) on the purchase price or the first instalment there of, as the case may be, being deposited, the tenant shall be deemed to have become the owner of the land, and the Assistant Collector shall, where the tenant is not already in possession and subject to the provisions of the Punjab Tenancy Act , (XVI of 1887), put him in possession thereof. It is absolutely plain that on the deposit of the first instalment of the purchase price, the tenant shall be deemed to have become the owner of the land. In the present case, all these happenings had resulted in the respondents becoming the owners. The death of the large landowner occurred pending the appeal. the argument of counsel for the appellant, which found favour with the Financial commissioner, but failed before the High Court, is that an appeal being a re-hearing of the suit, relief must be given to the legal representatives of the original landowner who, by devolution, became small landholders. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... after the litigation was initiated ? A system of orderliness about rights in land will result from this approach. More than all, the sounder rule of law as between rival claims to consideration of, or indifference to, subsequent events is surely that which excludes the later event factually or legally. Such a reading of the statutory scheme rhymes well with rapid agrarian reform contemplated by the framers. The philosophy of the approach which commends itself to us is that a litigant who seeks justice in a perfect legal system gets it when he asks for it. Rut because human institutions of legal justice function slowly, and in quest of perfection, appeals and reviews at higher levels are provided for, the end product comes considerably late. But these higher Courts pronounce upon the rights of parties as the facts stood when the first Court was first approached. The delay of years flows from the infirmity of the judicial institution and this protraction of the Court machinery shall prejudice no one. Actus curiae neminem gravabit(1). Precedential support invoked by the appellant's counsel also lets him down provided we scan the fact situation in each of those cases and the le ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... the relief as originally sought, has become obsolete or unserviceable or a new form of relief will be more efficacious on account of developments subsequent to the suit or even during the appellate stage, it is but fair that the relief is moulded, varied or re-shaped in the light of dated facts. Patterson(4) illustrates this position. It is important (1) An act of the court shall prejudice no one -Lalin for lawyers-Sweet Maxwell. that the party claiming the relief or change of relief must have the same right from which either the first or the modified remedy may flow. Subsequent events in the course of the case cannot be constitutive of substantive rights enforceable in that very litigation except in a narrow category (later spelt out) but may influence the equitable jurisdiction to mould reliefs. Conversely, where rights have already vested in a party, they cannot be nullified or negated by subsequent events save where there is a change in the law and it is made applicable at any stage. Lachmeshwar Prasad Shuku v. Keswar Lal Chaudhuri(1) falls in this category. Courts of justice may, when the compelling equities of a case oblige them, shape reliefs cannot rights- to make them j ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... agrarian reform, regarded as the vitaI base to build a new social order. The Constitution has stressed not merely the supreme significance of this rural transformation but the fleet-footed implementation thereof, even going to the extreme extent of walling off litigative assaults on constitutionality by creation of the Ninth Schedule and the like. Moreover, the Act itself takes care to prevent future accumulation of lands or motivated slimming process by transfers, interfering with the scheme of surplus pool and settlement of ejected tenants and the like. Peasant proprietorship is a cherished goal of the statute and so it provides that even on the payment of the first instalment of the price the tenant gets the title of the landlord. To hold that, if the landlord dies at some distant date after the title has vested in the tenant, the statutory process would be reversed if by such death, his many children, on division, will be converted into small landholders, is to upset the day of reckoning visualized by the Act and to make the vesting provision 'a teasing illusion', a formal festschrift to agrarian reform, not a flaming programme of 'now and here'. These surroundi ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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