Socio-economic pundits have attributed several reasons for the failure of land reforms in northern states. After reading the recent Supreme Court (SC) judgment in K N Farms Industries vs State of Bihar, it would seem that one of the troubles was with the word ‘land’. The proceedings which started in 1973 with respect to 380 acres in Jamshedpur went through 27 years of litigation which ended in the SC last month. The semantic snag was over the word ‘land’ — whether it included tanks on land surface. Land reform laws have been challenged often on the use of the word ‘land’, because it contains tanks, cattle sheds, thrashing yard and other appurtenances.
In this case, the question bothered first, the additional collector of Jamshedpur in 1982, then the Patna High Court judges for a decade and the SC judges till last month when they gave their final view. The Bihar Land Reforms Act says “even land perennially submerged under water” would be covered by the welfare legislation. Despite this plain language, the land-holding firm argued till the end that tanks are not included in the definition of land. Though the firm lost in the end, the land reform was stalled to that extent on the obstacle of a word.
There is heavy case law over this subject, though it might look like nitpicking to ordinary persons. One of the leading judgments, Authorised officer, Thanjavur vs Naganatha Ayyar (1979), emphasised that the object of the land ceiling laws is equitable distribution of land to the landless by taking over the surplus land by the state from large land-holders. Based on this decision, it was argued that since tanks cannot be distributed to the landless, land would mean only what was capable of being used for agriculture or horticulture. In another judgment, SK Arsed Ali vs SK Fasle Hakani (1996), the SC ruled that a tank where fish are bred would not fall within the definition of land in the West Bengal land reforms law.
Another strong argument in favour of the land-owner was that the sea and rivers were not considered land and therefore tanks cannot be considered as land either. If the determining factor is the existence of land or level surface beneath the water, then even the sea and rivers will have to be treated as land. However, the SC rejected these arguments. It said that the purpose of the law should be examined while deciding the meaning of words used in a legislation. The court cannot do “violence to the plain language used in the statute.” This is all the more so when a word is “clearly, specially and exhaustively defined in the Act itself.” One might wonder why it took nearly three decades to decide the meaning of a simple word.
Last year, the meaning of ‘land’ was again the issue in a case from Andhra Pradesh (Mallepudi vs State of AP). A commission was appointed to find out the nature of the land. Its report excluded lands covered by ‘Hayrick mounds, canal bunds, cattle shed and thrashing floor’ from agricultural land and therefore outside the definition of land. However, the court rejected this report.
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Finding the meaning of words is an intricate task for the court, especially in excise and sales tax laws. Pages have been written by SC judges on whether drawings and designs imported can be included in the ancient word, ‘book’ for the purposes of the Customs Act. Is a trolley for repairing overhead wires a vehicle or a piece of equipment? What is the difference between skin and leather? Should malted barley be included in the schedule of food grains or cereals? These are some of the problems in the fiscal laws.
The challenge to the interpretative skills of judges is even more pronounced in other fields. Two years ago, the SC passed a judgment discussing the meaning of ‘grab’ in the AP Land Grabbing Act. There was a tedious discussion on the difference between furniture and fixtures in another decision. ‘May’ has been read to mean ‘shall’; ‘or’ has been made equivalent to ‘and’ in certain circumstances.
‘Modesty’, a word left like that by law-makers in the Indian Penal Code, was defined by the SC recently as “an attribute associated with female human beings as a class, a virtue attached to a female on account of her sex.” In a trial involving ‘outraging the modesty of a woman’, this might be of as little help as attempts to define obscenity over decades.
Then there is a thin line between ‘legal insanity’ and ‘medical insanity’ when a person of unsound mind commits a crime. If a defence lawyer can bend the meaning right, and is clever enough to convince the judge, he could save his client from the gallows.