Judgment :- 1. These suits are by tenants under S.53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act. They have executed deeds of surrender of their tenancy rights in favour of the landlord in 1951. S.53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act provides: "any document executed by a Cultivating Verumpattomdar after the 28th July 1950 and before the commencement of the Malabar Tenancy (Amendment) Act, 1954, purporting to affect his rights or status as tenant shall be voidable at the option of the Cultivating Verumpattomdar". The plaintiffs have issued notices as required in the section before the prescribed date, and have instituted these suits in time as provided in the said section., 2. The landlords contended, inter alia, that S.53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act offended the fundamental rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and is as such unconstitutional and void. On their motion the suits have been withdrawn to this court under Art.228 of the Constitution for the determination of that question. The learned counsel for the defendants-landlords challenged the validity of the said section as violative of the fundamental rights guaranteed under Art.14,19 and 31 of the Constitution. According to the learned counsel S.53 is discriminate in that oral surrenders of tenant's rights irrespective of date, and surrenders of tenant's rights before the 28th July 1950 and after the 20th March 1954 are not affected by it and this would be a discrimination which is not based on any reasonable classification. He would further contend that the tenant having surrendered all his rights to the landlord under a transaction which was legal and valid according to the law as it then stood, the tenancy had terminated and absolute rights in the property had become vested in the landlord. To nullify the same by a subsequent legislation with retrospective effect would offend the rights guaranteed to the landlord under Art.19 [1] [f] of the Constitution. A further ground of objection was that this provision for cancellation of the surrender and restoration of the property to the tenant tantamounts to a deprivation of the proprietory rights vested in the landlord for which no compensation is provided for in the Act and as such it offends Art.31 of the Constitution also. A further ground of objection was that this provision for cancellation of the surrender and restoration of the property to the tenant tantamounts to a deprivation of the proprietory rights vested in the landlord for which no compensation is provided for in the Act and as such it offends Art.31 of the Constitution also. The learned Advocates who appeared for the plaintiffs as also the learned Government Pleader who was called to appear in the case under Order XXVII-A of the Civil Procedure Code oppose an enquiry into the merits of these contentions as they are expressly barred by Art.31A of the Constitution. They urge that the impugned piece of legislation, being one intended for the extinguishment or modification of rights in estates by way of agrarian reform, is within the protection of Art.31A of the Constitution. 4. The Malabar Tenancy Act is an Act of agrarian reform. The Act was being amended from time to time; and two such amendments, that may be material for our purposes here, were by Act 33 of 1951 and by Act 7 of 1954 passed by the Madras Legislature. By Act 33 of 1951 the rents payable by the tenants to the landlords were regulated by provisions calculated to give a large margin of relief to the tenants; but the provisions in the Act empowering the landlord to evict the tenants and resume the land for his own cultivation were left unaffected. In view of those provisions, several landlords pressed for the surrender of lands by the tenants under pretext that they wanted them for their own cultivation, and in the period between 28-7-1950 the date of publication of the bill for fixation of fair rent and the commencement of the next amendment of the Act in 1954 many a law-abiding tenant had to execute deeds of surrender of what they could not have resisted in a court of law under the then law. When the Act was next amended by Act 7 of 1954 this was taken note of by the Legislature in shaping the provisions of the Amending Act. The statement of objects and reasons for the enactment of Act 7 of 1954 shows that one of the objects of the enactment was to give relief against forceful evictions of the tenants by the landlord. The statement of objects and reasons for the enactment of Act 7 of 1954 shows that one of the objects of the enactment was to give relief against forceful evictions of the tenants by the landlord. But the section as it emerged out of the Legislature does not refer to any coercion or other inducement vitiating the surrender as the ground for avoidance of the transaction. Obviously the Legislature presumed that in the then state of law the tenants could not avail themselves of the beneficent provisions of Act 33 of 1951 regulating the fair rent of the land as they were at the mercy of the landlord and had to surrender their holdings on the mere demand of the landlord that he required the land for his own cultivation. It was therefore felt necessary by the Legislature that in order to secure the benefits of Act 33 of 1951 to the tenants, they had to be given the option to avoid all deeds of surrender executed after the publication of the bill which matured into that Act; and the present S.53 is the result thereof. It is pertinent to note that simultaneously with the enactment of S.53, the landlord's right to resume the property for his own cultivation was limited to cases where he bona fide required the same for the 'primary needs' of maintenance of himself and his family. It follows therefore that the provisions of S.53 are real agrarian reforms, and cannot be characterised as mere expropriations of the landlord's rights. 5. The scope of Art.31A of the Constitution has recently been explained by a Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court in Kavalappara Moopil Nayar v. State of Madras, (1960 KLT. (SC.) 31 at 41 thus: "The definition of "estate" refers to an existing law relating to land tenures in a particular area indicating thereby that the Article is concerned only with the land tenure described as an "estate" It is, therefore, manifest that the said Article deals with a tenure called "estate" and provides for its acquisition or extinguishment or modification of the rights of the land-holder or the various subordinate tenure-holders in respect of their rights in relation to the estate. The contrary view would enable the State to divest a proprietor of his estate and vest it in another without reference to any agrarian reform. The contrary view would enable the State to divest a proprietor of his estate and vest it in another without reference to any agrarian reform. It would also enable the State to create interest therein in favour of persons other than tenants who had none before. Such acts have no relation to land tenures and they are purely acts of expropriation of a citizen's property without any reference to agrarian reform. Art.31A deprives citizens of their fundamental rights and such an Article cannot be extended by interpretation to overreach the object implicit in the Article." It is therefore clear that a law providing for modification or even extinguishment, in part or whole, of the landlord's rights in relation to a tenancy for purposes of agrarian reform is well within the protection of Art.31A of the Constitution and cannot be canvassed as inconsistent with or as taking away or abridging any of the rights conferred by Art.14,19 or 31 of the Constitution. 6. Again in Atma Ram v. State of Punjab, (AIR. 1959 S.C. 519): "Keeping in view the fact that Art.31A was enacted by two successive amendments - one in 1951 [First Amendment], and the second in 1955 [Fourth Amendment] - with retrospective effect, in order to save legislation effecting agrarian reforms, we have every reason to hold that those expressions have been used in their widest amplitude, consistent with the purpose behind those amendments. A piece of validating enactment purposely introduced into the Constitution with a view to saving that kind of legislation from attacks on the ground of constitutional invalidity, based on Art.14,19 and 31, should not be construed in a narrow sense. On the other hand, such a constitutional enactment should be given its fullest and widest effect, consistently with the purpose behind the enactment, provided, however, that such a construction does not involve any violence to the language actually used." The provisions of S.53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act, being provisions intended to secure and improve the economical status or welfare of the tenants of lands, are provisions of agrarian reform; and they do come within the purview of clause [1] (a) of Art.31-A of the Constitution which prohibits their impeachment under Art.14,19 or 31 of the Constitution. 7. No other Article has been invoked in this case in challenge of the Constitutional validity of the said section. 8. 7. No other Article has been invoked in this case in challenge of the Constitutional validity of the said section. 8. I hold therefore that S.53 of the Malabar Tenancy Act, as incorporated in the Act by the Madras Amendment Act 7 of 1954, is not affected by any infirmity by virtue of any of the provisions in the Constitution. 9. The question of constitutionality of the section having been determined as above, these cases will be returned to the court below with a copy of this judgment for its decision on the other issues in the case. In the circumstances of these cases, the parties are directed to bear their own costs in this Court.