PETITIONER:
RAMA VERMA BHARATHAN THAMPURAN
Vs.
RESPONDENT:
STATE OF KERALA AND ORS.
DATE OF JUDGMENT30/07/1979
BENCH:
KRISHNAIYER, V.R.
BENCH:
KRISHNAIYER, V.R.
DESAI, D.A.
KOSHAL, A.D.
CITATION:
1979 AIR 1918 1980 SCR (2) 136
1979 SCC (4) 782
ACT:
Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the Palace
(Partition) and the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System
(Abolition) Amendment Act, 1978 (Act 15 of 1978),
constitutional validity of.
HEADNOTE:
The Maharaja of Cochin, reigned and ruled over a pretty
State, Cochin, which is now an integral part of the Kerala
State. The Travancore-Cochin State came into being on July
1, 1949. Two days before this constitutional merger, the
Maharaja of Cochin issued a Proclamation to provide for the
impartibility, administration and preservation of the Royal
Estate and the Palace Fund through a Five-man Board of
Trustees. A small Process of family legislation on the
Cochin Palace followed the political transformation of the
State. The first was the Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate
and the Palace Fund (Partition) Act, 1961 (Act 16 of 1961),
the primary purpose of which was to undo the impartibility
of the Royal Estate, as declared by the Proclamation of
1949. Sections 4 and 5 of the Act prescribed the shares of
the members, the mode of division and the machinery for
partition under these provisions, on a majority of the major
members of the royal family expressing their wish to be
divided, the Maharaja would consider whether it was in the
interest of the family to partition the estate among the
members and, if he did, direct the Board of Trustees to
proceed with the partition under his supervision and
control. Each member including en ventra sa mere, was
eligible for a single share on an equal basis. The Board
nominated under the earlier Proclamation was continued but
its responsibilities were broadened. The privileges of the
Maharaja were preserved as his personal rights but vis-a-vis
family assets feudal "primogeniture" fell to modern egalite,
within limits. As a result of the 26th Constitution
Amendment Act of 1971 which extinguished all royal
privileges, privy purses and other dignities of the
erstwhile rulers of the Indian States, the Cochin Maharaja
stepped down to the level of the Karta of a Joint Hindu
Family. The Marummakkattayam system which ensured
impartibility and management by the senior most member had
lost its functional value and virtually vanished from the
Kerala coast with the passing of the Kerala Joint Hindu
Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975 (Act 30 of 1976).
Despite this revolutionary change, the Cochin royal family
maintained its former status as Marummakkattayam undivided
coparcenary since it was governed by special legislation
which remained unrepealed. Therefore, the Kerala Legislation
enacted the Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the
Palace Fund (Partition) and the Kerala Joint Hindu Family
System (Abolition) Amendment Act, 1978 (Act 15 of 1978).
Before the High Court and in the special leave petition, the
vires of the Amending Act omitting sections 4 and 5 from the
Principal Act 16/1961 was challenged as offending Articles
14 and 19 of the Constitution.
Dismissing the special leave petition, the Court,
137
^
HELD: The public policy behind Section 7 of the
Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the Palace Fund
(Partition) Act, 1961, excluding civil court jurisdiction is
not merely the special situation of the former royal family
but the virtual impossibility within a life-time of division
by metes and bounds and allotment of shares to the 800 odd
members, most of whom are real royalties in rags, homeless
and hungry, seeking to survive by the small pieces from the
large cake if ever it will be sliced and distributed. [141A-
B]
Civil litigation for partition is the surest punishment
to the tattered 'princelings' by pauperizing them through
the justice process and giving them stones instead of bread
in the end, if the end would arrive at all. The compulsive
pragmatics of distributive justice elicited legislative
compassion for this uniquely numerous crowd of pauperised
patricians by exclusion of civil courts jurisdiction. The
pathology of protracted, exotic processual legalistic needs
comprehensive renovation if the Justice System is to survive
but the legislature salvaged the largest royal family with
the littlest individual resources without waiting for the
remote undertaking to overhaul Processual Justice to the
People. Sociology is the mother of law, lest law in the
books should be bastardized by the law of life. [141D-F]
2. Our constitutional order is sensibly and sensitively
allergic to arbitrary power and the Supreme Court will
unhesitatingly strike down any provision which can be
anathematised as creating uncanalised and Neronised power.
Section 4 of the Principal Act of 1961 provided for an equal
opportunity for every member including those en ventre sa
mere. This provision was deleted because its purpose was
otherwise served by the substituted Section 3 of Act 16 of
1961 by including a direction to the Board "to effect
partition of the Estate and the Palace Fund among all the
members entitled to a share"..................under Section
4 of the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act,
1975 (Act 30 of 1976)." The effect of the importation of
Section 4 of the Abolition Act is to ensure partition per
capita among all the members as in the case of a Joint Hindu
Family other than an undivided mitakshara Hindu family. What
was otiose, namely, Section 4 of Act 16 of 1961, was cut
out. This was merely a drafting operation not making any
change in the substantive law bearing upon the shares of the
members. The contention that by this deletion the members of
the Kovilagam had been made over as hostages to the caprice
of the Board of Trustees is a frightful error or
disingenuous scare. [142-F-G, 143H, 144A-B]
3. Section 5 of the 1961 Act arrogated to the Maharaja
of Cochin the power to exclude any properties from the
category of partible estate. If most members were to be
indigent, the infliction upon such members by the Maharaja's
act of exclusion of as many properties as he thought should
not be divided would be unjust. Since every member was
entitled to an equal share with the Maharaja himself all the
properties should be available for partition and this
result, which is eminently just, is achieved by the omission
of Section 5 from Act 16 of 1961. Therefore, the provision
in Act 15 of 1978 omitting Section 5 from the principal Act
is a virtue to be commended, not a vice to be condemned. It
is eminently reasonable and to contend against it is
obviously unreasonable. [143D-F]
4. To blaspheme the Board as an imperium in imperio, a
law unto itself and therefore, arbitrary is an egregious
error. The Board was not a new creation
138
but an old concoction brought into being by the Ruler thirty
years ago, continued by the Kerala Legislature in Act 16 of
1961 and recognised by the latest amendment Act. The Board
is a time honoured entity wherein the heads of the four
branches are members and is entrusted with the work of
division of assets. The Board, being an old institution in
plenary management since 1949 and wisely composed of senior-
most members of the four branches, is sentimentally and
functionally the best instrument to divide and distribute.
Indeed Act 16 of 1961 had also entrusted the task of
partition to the same Board and no member had during nearly
two decades challenged the wisdom of the provision. [144B-D]
Section 3 of the Act 15 of 1978 does not dispense with
canons of fair play of natural justice and of quasi-judicial
values. A non-curial instrumentality and procedure for
partitioning cannot be condemned as discriminatory. The
alternative created by the statute is quite reasonable and
is a better instrument having regard to the totality of
factors. Law is not a cocoon and keeps its eyes wide awake
to the realities of life. The legislation in question has
taken note of all facts namely; (a) absence of any complaint
against their management ever since the Board's creation;
(b) sanctification of the Board by the principal Act 16 of
1961 by conferring powers of partitioning the "Kovilagam"
properties on this very Board; and does nothing more What
was good and valid in 1961 could not become vicious and
invalid in 1978. [145 B-D, E]
Quasi-judicial responsibilities are implied by the
statute in the Board's function and if the Board breaches
these norms and canons, the constitutional remedy under
Article 226 comes into play. After all, the Board is a
statutory body and not an executive creature. It has been
saddled with effecting the rights of parties and is bound to
act quasi-judicially. Its deviances are not unreviewable in
writ jurisdiction. Sufficient guidelines are built in
Section 3 and therefore Section 3 (2) is not unbridled and
unconstitutional. [145F-G. 146E]
Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, [1976] Suppl. S.C.R.
489; M. S. Gill and Anr. v. Union of India, [1978] 2 S.C.R.
621, Organo Chemical Industries and Anr. v. Union of India &
Anr., [1980] 1 S.C.R. p. 61 referred to.
5. Absence of appeals does not jettison justice, though
often times, appeals are the bane of the justice system,
especially because the rich can defeat the poor and the weak
can be baulked of their rights indefinitely that way. The
Board is a statutory body and when it violates the
prescriptions of the law or otherwise acts arbitrarily or
malafide, Art. 226 of the Constitution is a corrective. [146
F-G]
6. Act 15 of 1978 has none of the characteristics of
class legislation and is on the other hand, an equalising
measure with a pragmatic touch. The Cochin Kovilagam vis-a-
vis the Kerala State is sui generis. It has been
legislatively dealt with as a special class throughout the
history of Kerala and before. Partitioning of the royal
family estates on principles similar those applicable to all
other Kerala Hindu Families with the only difference that a
Board instead of a Civil Court allots shares by metes and
bounds, is fully justifiable by the special circumstances.
[147 A-B]
JUDGMENT:
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Special Leave Petition
(Civil) No. 5863 of 1979.
139
From the Judgment and Order dated 15-12-1978 of the
Kerala High Court in Original Petition No. 679/78-II.
N. Sudhakaran for the Petitioner.
A. S. Nambiar for the Respondents.
The Order of the Court was delivered by
KRISHNA IYER, J. All the parties are represented by
counsel and we have heard them in extenso. We therefore
proceed to pass a speaking order.
The princely family of Cochin with a proletarian
plurality of members has been the cynosure of special
legislations, the last of which is Act 15 of 1978, the
target of attack in this special leave petition. Articles 14
and 19 of the Constitution have been the ammunation used by
the petitioner in the High Court and here to shoot down the
legislation as ultra vires.
A brief sketch of the family law of the Cochin royalty
may serve to appreciate the scheme of the latest legislation
under challenge. The Maharaja of Cochin, reigned and ruled
over a pretty princely State, Cochin, which is now an
integral part of the Kerala State. When the curtain of
history rose to find India free, the constellation of
princedoms fused into Independent India’s democratic
geography. Cochin and Travancore finally fell in with this
trend. As a first step they were integrated into the
Travancore-Cochin State which came into being on July 1,
1949. Two days before this constitutional merger, the
Maharaja of Cochin issued a Proclamation to provide for the
impartibility, administration and preservation of the Royal
Estate and the Palace Fund through a Board of Trustees. A
small process of family legislation on the Cochin Palace
followed the political transformation of the State. The
Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the palace Fund
(Partition) Act, 1961 (Actt 16 of 1961) was the first, the
primary purpose of which was to undo the impartibility of
the royal estate as declared by the Proclamation of 1949.
The shares of the members, the mode of division and the
machinery for partition were statutorily prescribed by
Sections 4 and 5 of the said Act. The basics of those two
sections were that on a majority of the major members of the
royal family expressing their wish to be divided, the
Maharaja would consider whether it was in the interest of
the family to partition the estate among the members and, if
he did, direct the Board of Trustees to proceed with the
partition under his supervision and control. Each member,
including a child in the womb, was eligible for a single
share on an equal basis. The privi-
140
leges of the Maharaja were preserved as his personal right
but vis-a-vis family assets feudal ‘Primogeniture’ fell to
modern egalite, within limits.
The next epochal legislation was the 26th Constitution
Amendment Act of December 1971 which extinguished all royal
privileges, privy purses and cher dignities of the erstwhile
rulers of the Indian States. With the denudation of his
royal privileges the Cochin Maharaja stepped down to the
level of the karta of a joint Hindu family. The royalty
which was once a reality became a mere memory and with the
statutory injection of democratic rights into this blue-
blooded family, plebeian claims for equal shares began to be
voiced, especially because the multifid of little royalties
of the Maharaja’s matriarchal family lived in lurid poverty,
as counsel distressingly described. Indeed, the
marummakkattayam system which at one time ensured
impartibility and management by the senior-most member had
lost its functional value and virtually vanished from the
Kerala coast, thanks to the erosive process of legislative
individualism. The final blow to this system was delivered
by the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act,
1975 (Act 30 of 1976) which fully wiped out the matriarchal
pattern of holding and the Hindu undivided family system in
the State of Kerala. Despite this revolutionary change, the
Cochin royal family maintained its former status as a
marummakkattayam undivided coparcenary since it was governed
by special legislation which remained unrepealed. This regal
matriarchal survival levelled into the main-stream of
proprietary life with equal, partible shares for young and
old, like the rest of the community when the Kerala
legislature enacted the Valiamma Thampuram Kovilakam Estate
and the Palace Fund (Partition) and the Kerala Joint Hindu
Family System (Abolition) Amendment Act, 1978 (Act 15 of
1978) (preceded by Ordinance No. 1 of 1978).
A close-up of this statutory scheme is necessary since
it is this legislation which is furiously fusilladed as
unconstitutional by counsel for the petitioner. The
legislative Proclamation of 1949, if we briefly
recapitulate, commended the Constitution by His Highness the
Maharaja of a five-man Board of Trustees charged with the
plenary task of ‘administration, management and
conservation’ of the ‘Estate’ and ‘Palace Fund’. Act 16 of
1961 brought about a degree of economic democratisation
while preserving some of the special legal habiliments of
the royal estate. The Board nominated under the earlier
Proclamation was continued but its responsibilities were
broadened to include partitioning of the Kovilakam assets if
a majority of major members-the voice of Palace democracy-
asked for divi-
141
sion and the Maharaja deemed it desirable in the interests
of the family. This was a half way house between the
impartible old and partible-at-will new. A short provision
of great relevance to the issue of constitutionality is to
be found in Section 7. The public policy behind this Section
excluding civil court jurisdiction is not merely the special
situation of the former royal family but the virtual
impossibility within a life-time of division by metes and
bounds and allotment of shares to the 800 odd members, most
of whom are little royalties in rags, homeless and hungry,
seeking to survive by the small pieces from the large cake
if ever it will be sliced and distributed. The exasperating
longevity of partition litigation, what with the present
cantankerous orientation and procedural interminability,
preliminary decree, appeals thereon, commissions,
objections, revisions, final decrees, and a ruinous crown of
other interlocutory proceedings punctuating the suit,
followed by inevitable appeals and special leave petitions
and the like, baffles the humble and baulks their hope of
getting a morsel in their short life span. When this
phenomenon-an Indo-Anglican processual bequest-is compounded
by the calamitous fact that there are around 800 sharers and
a variety of considerable assets to be divided, civil
litigation for partition is the surest punishment to the
tattered ‘princelings’ by pauperising them through the
justice process and giving them stones instead of bread in
the end, if the end would arrive at all ! The compulsive
pragmatics of distributive justice elicited legislative
compassion for this uniquely numerous crowd of pauperised
patricians by exclusion of civil court’s jurisdiction. The
pathology of protracted, exotic processual legalistics needs
comprehensive renovation if the Justice System is to survive
but the legislature salvaged the largest royal family with
the littlest individual resources without waiting for the
remote undertaking to overhaul Processual Justice to the
People. Sociology is the mother of law, lest law in the
books should be bastardised by the law of life.
A radical measure which swept off the matriarchal
system and the Joint family form of estate for Hindus is the
next statutory even which needs mention. Kerala Act 30 of
1976 (The Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act,
1975), abolished at one stroke the Hindu undivided family
and converted them into tenancies-in-common with the rule of
one member one share. The Cochin ‘Kovilagam’ was not
affected because neither Act 16 of 1961 nor the prior royal
proclamation expressly repealed. But the individualist
spirit of Act 30 of 1976 invaded the royal family
legislatively as there is no basis for proprietary
privilege, even as vestiges of past glory, in a democracy
charged with social justice. So, Act 15 of 1978 (The
Valiamma
142
Thampuram Kovilakam Estate and the Palace Fund (Partition)
and the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition)
Amendment Act, 1978) came to be passed whereby division of
the Kovilakam assets was freed from the Maharaja’s
subjectivism and made a mandate of the statute, in tune with
the common trend. The modus operandi to work out partition
was the Board and no specific prescription regarding the
shares of members is given. No appeal from the partition
effected by the Board is specified and Sections 4 and 5 of
Act 16 of 1961 are deleted retrospectively.
A quick glance at the provisions gives the impression
that the legislature merely equated the right in partition
of the junior members of the Kovilakam with that of the
commonalty of marumakkattayam families save that instead of
the Civil Court the division by metes and bounds was to be
carried out by the Board which was already in management and
was familiar with the features of the family and the assets.
A closer look, in the light of the constitutional challenge
which was repelled by the High Court, leaves us cold, hot
submissions to burn down the allegedly arbitrary and
irresesonable legislation notwithstanding.
Let us dissect the anatomy of the Amending Act of 1978.
Be it remembered that Act 16 of 1961 (the principal Act) is
not and has never been attacked as ultra vires. If the
principal Act was good the search for the invalidatory vice
must be confined to the cluster of new clauses.
The principal violation pressed before us by Shri
Govindan Nair for the petitioner, who is a senior member of
the family, is of Art. 14 and the customary contention, more
easily waged than established, is that arbitrary, unguided,
naked and tyrannical power is conferred on the Board and
therefore the whole Act is bad because the central piece of
the statutory scheme is this machinery. True, our
constitutional order is sensibly and sensitively allergic to
arbitrary power and we have no hesitation in striking down
any provision which can be anathematised as creating
uncanalised and Neronised Power. The very creation of the
Board was challenged as violative of Art. 14 since the
jurisdiction of the Civil Court is the common forum with
other judicial remedies, appellate and revisional, available
for the aggrieved party. While the Board is given plenary
power to divide and distribute with validity being conferred
on such partition the grievance is that there are no appeals
and revisions and the arbitrament of the Board even if it is
arbitrary becomes final. This is castigated as a caprice of
the legislature. More than all, the very singling
143
out of the ruler’s family, populous though it be, is
anathematised as discriminatory. Incidentally, the powers of
the Board are charged as unreasonable since there is no
provision to give a hearing to the affected parties in the
process of adjudication and the whole process may well be
the deliberations of a secret campaign. These violent vices
imputed to the statute will certainly invalidate the Act 15
of 1978, if there were some substance therein. Even an
imaginative exercise, if informed by realism, discovers no
such infirmity.
Let us clear the confusion caused by the omission of
Sections 4 and 5 of the principal Act. Shri Govindan Nair
for the petitioners relied on this omission to contend that
the wholesome provisions of sections 4 and 5 of the
Principal Act of 1961 have been waywardly withdrawn leaving
it to the Board to award such shares as they fancied to the
various members. This submission proceeds on a simple
misconception. Section 4 provides for an equal share for
every member including a child in the womb and Section 5
arrogates to the Maharaja of Cochin the power to exclude any
properties from the category of partible estate. No democrat
will shed a tear if Section 5 were deleted. The members, as
Shri Govindan Nair himself urged, were mostly indigent. If
that were so, the infliction upon such members by the
Maharaja’s act of exclusion of as many properties as he
thought should not be divided would be unjust. Since every
member was entitled to an equal share with the Maharaja
himself all the properties should be available for partition
and this result, which is eminently just, is achieved by the
omission of Section 5 from Act 16 of 1961. Therefore, the
provision in Act 15 of 1978 omitting Section 5 from the
principal Act is a virtue to be commended, not a vice to be
condemned. It is eminently reasonable and to contend against
it is obviously unreasonable.
A different criticism has been made regarding the
deletion of Section 4 by Shri Govindan Nair; but it is
equally mis-conceived, if we may say so. Section 4 of Act 16
of 1961 provided for the share of members including those en
ventre sa mere. This provision was deleted because its
purpose was otherwise served by the substituted Section 3 of
Act 16 of 1961 by including a direction to the Board “to
effect partition of the Estate and the Palace Fund among all
the members entitled to a share. . . under Section 4 of the
Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975 (Act
30 of 1976).” The effect of the importation of Section 4 of
the Abolition Act is to ensure partition per capita among
all the members as in the case of a Joint Hindu Family other
than an undivided Mitakshara Hindu family.
144
What was otiose, namely, Section 4 of Act 16 of 1961, was
cut out. This was merely a drafting operation not making any
change in the substantive law bearing upon the shares of the
members. The contention that by this deletion the members of
the Kovilagam had been made over as hostages to the caprice
of the Board of Trustees is a frightful error or
disingenuous scare.
In the course of his submissions, counsel had a dig at
the Board, which, according to him, was an imperium in
imperio, a law unto itself and, therefore, arbitrary. This
again is an egregious error. The Board was not a new
creation but an old concoction. Thirty years ago the Ruler
brought it into being. Since then, the Kerala legislature,
in Act 16 of 1961, continued it and the latest legislation
now denounced before us recognised this time-honoured entity
wherein the heads of the four branches were members and
entrusted it with the work of division of assets. The Board,
being an old institution in plenary management since 1949
and wisely composed of the seniormost members of the four
branches, is sentimentally and functionally the best
instrument to divide and distribute. Indeed Act 16 of 1961
had also entrusted the task of partition to the same Board
and no member had during nearly two decades challenged the
wisdom of the provision. We see no legal ground to blaspheme
this Board.
The greater grievance of counsel about the Board was
something else. He contended that the Board under Section 3
(2) was empowered to effect the partition of the Estate and
the Palace Fund “and the partition so effected shall be
valid….” From this the criticism was spun out that the
Board was likely to act in any manner it pleased, sell the
properties at any price, distribute the assets at its sweet
will or whim and thus reduce the partition of Kovilagam
properties to a mock exercise by an unchallengable Board. He
contrasted this grim picture with the advantageous
alternative of a civil suit where the shares were fixed
according to law, the properties were valued by a
Commissioner, objections to the report of the Commissioner
were considered by the Court and a decree, preliminary or
final, was subject to appeal and further appeal. The
judicial process was a great guarantee of the rights of
parties which was unavailable before the statutorily
immunised and potentially eccentric Board of Trustees. We
remained unmoved by this sombre picturisation made up of
illusory apprehensions. We have earlier pointed out that the
strength of the Cochin Royal family is around 800. The
properties consist of urban lands, rural lands, buildings
and other assets considerable in volume and value. A
litigative resolution of the conflicts among members with
the plethora of interlocutory proceedings plus revisions
145
and appeals may be an endless adventure which would surely
bankrupt the poorer members and deny to everyone a share in
the properties by metes and bounds for a generation to come.
Of course, those who are already in possession of
properties-and counsel for the respondent hinted that the
petitioners belong to this category-would benefit by
striking down this legislation and delay in legislative
rectification of the situation and the further litigation
that might be launched and so on. Those who have, have a
vested interest in procratination; those who have not, have
an urgent interest in instant justice. In this view, a non-
curial instrumentality and procedure for partitioning the
properties cannot be condemned as discriminatory. The
alternative created by the statute is quite a reasonable and
in our view a better instrument having regard to the
totality of factors. Law is not a cocoon and keeps its eyes
wide awake to the realities of life. The legislation in
question has taken note of the fact that the Board has been
for decades entrusted by the Maharaja by his Proclamation
with the administration of the family estate and no
complaints have ever been voiced against their management.
The latter legislation of 1961 has sanctified this Board.
That legislation has gone to the extent of conferring powers
of partitioning the Kovilagam properties on this Board and
the present Act of 1978 does nothing more. We are unable to
understand how what was good and valid in 1961 Act could
become vicious and invalid in 1978. The composition of the
Board and its history and experience convince us that it was
a fit instrument for the task entrusted.
The fear expressed before us that the Board may ignore
the norms of judicial procedure while settling the rights of
parties is misplaced. We do not regard Section 3 of Act 15
of 1978 as dispensing with canons of fairplay of natural
justice and of quasi-judicial values.
We realise that the enormous work of dividing the
properties has to be carefully carried out. Quasi-judicial
responsibilities are implied by the statute in the Board’s
functions and if the Board breaches these norms and canons
the constitutional remedy under Article 226 comes into play.
After all, the Board is a statutory body and not an
executive creature. It has been saddled with effecting the
rights of parties and is bound to act quasi-judicially. Its
deviances are not unreviewable in writ jurisdiction.
Therefore, we direct the Board to comply with the
requirements prescribed in several decisions of this Court
in quasi-judicial jurisdictions. Natural justice is
obviously the first as this Court has ruled in a shower of
cases especially highlighting in Maneka Gandhi’s case(1) and
M. S. Gill’s case(2). This Court has
146
gone to the extent of holding that natural justice require
reasons to be written for conclusions made. The Organo
Chemical Industries & Anr. v. Union of India & Anr.(1) this
Court has held that the absence of a right of appeal does
not spell arbitrariness. It is further held in the same
ruling that giving of reasons for conclusions is ordinarily
an important component of natural justice in quasi-judicial
tribunals. In short, every facility that a party will
reasonably receive before a quasi-judicial body when rights
are adjudicated upon, will be available before this Board
and we mandate it to extend such facilities and
opportunities. We need hardly mention that when properties
are sold parties must be intimated and the principles
embedded in the Partition Act must be taken note of when
properties are valued and allotted. The services of valuers
of properties or of Commissioners must also be used.
Moreover, parties must be given opportunity to object to
reports of Commissioners, if any, appointed. In short, the
general law, processual and substantive, bearing on
allotment of properties cannot be thrown to the winds by the
Board merely because Section 3 does not write these details
into it. We must hasten to caution that no party can hold
the Board in ransom by raising vexatious and frivolous
objections and putting in proceeding after proceeding merely
to delay or defeat. The Board is geared to completion of the
partition with a reasonable speed and that purpose must
inform its activities. While every party is entitled to a
reasonable voice in the proceedings no party can enjoy the
privilege of thwarting the processes of justice. These
observations and directions which are built-in in Section 3,
in our view, are sufficient guidelines to repel the
submission that the power under Section 3(2) is unbridled
and unconstitutional. Partitions are best done by a broad
consensus and the Board will remember that constant
consultation with the members may facilitate its work and
reduce tension and friction.
Nor are we impressed with the argument that because
appeals are absent justice is jettisoned. Oftentimes,
appeals are the bane of the justice system, especially
because the rich can defeat the poor and the weak can be
baulked of their rights indefinitely that way. We do not
mean to decry the right of appeal, but may not go with the
petitioner in glorifying it in all situations. We have
emphasised that the Board is a statutory body and when it
violates the prescriptions of the law or otherwise acts
arbitrarily or mala fide, Art. 226 of the Constitution is a
corrective. Nothing more is needed because everything needed
is implied in that power.
147
The last and perhaps the least valid submission, with
meretricious attraction, is the challenge based on unequal
legislation picking out one from among equals for hostile
treatment. We have held that the royal family estate is
being partitioned on principles similar to those applicable
to all other Kerala Hindu families and the only difference
is a Board instead of a court to allot shares by metes and
bounds. This, we have shown, is fully justified by the
special circumstances. The Cochin Kovilakam vis-a-vis the
Kerala State is sui generis. It has been legislatively dealt
with as a special class throughout the history of Kerala and
before. The Act impugned has none of the characteristics of
class legislation and, is on the other hand, an equalising
measure with a pragmatic touch.
We negative the specious submission.
We find no merit in this Special Leave Petition and
dismiss it without costs.
V.D.K. Petition dismissed.
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