Judgment:
1. The writ appeal has been filed by the appellants against an order of single Judge holding that the writ petitioners did not have locus standi to question the G. p. Ms. No. 501 (Revenue) dated 9-3-1983 which has been passed by the State Government under Section 20 of the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1976.
2. On an application of the owner who owned excess vacant land, the impugned orderas passed by the State Government underSection 20 of the above Urban Act grantingexemption to the owner in respect of theexcess land. The owner has no complaintagainst the order so passed in his favour. Infact he invited it and accepted it. Under Section 20of the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation)Act, 1976, the State Government hasundoubted powers to pass such orders and togrant such exemption to an owner who holdsvacant lands in excess of ceiling limit. If theSlate Government in exercise of that powerhad issued the impugned G. O. and grantedexemption to the owners subject to certainconditions the owner of course can complainto this Court on valid grounds. When legalquestions of ultra vires are raised against astatutory authority by an aggrieved partycourts are duty bound to entertain the matterand adjudicate upon the dispute. (See Queenv. Burah, (1879) 5 Ind App 178.)
3. But the question is, can a third party challenge the validity of such an order of, statutory exemption while the owner welcomes, accepts and acquiesces in that order of the Government which is in his favour. That is the question that arises in this writ appeal. This writ petition has been filed by such third parties challenging the validity of that order but without in any way being hurt by that order. The writ petitioners have no rights or interests in that property. The writ petition can at best be described as an attempt to enforce Rule of Law. The question is whether judicial process can be let loose for such a purpose? The learned single Judge held that the petitioners have no locus standi to call in question the exemption order and to file the writ petition. The appellate Bench which admitted this writ appeal against that order of the single Judge confined the scope of the appeal only to question of locus standi of the writ petitioners. We confine our inquiry into the question whether the appellants have locus standi to challenge the validity of the order passed by the Government under Section 20 of the Urban Ceiling Act which is accepted by the owner.
4. According to the notions of traditional law the appellants should clearly be turned out of Court. A court before it permits a party to agitate any legal question before it must be satisfied that the party agitating such legal question is ventilating a grievance relating to some legal injury suffered by that party. Some say that such an injury must not be common with the rest of humanity. It must be unique to that party atone. Law will not permit A to cry for B's injury. Law's dictum is mind your own business. Otherwise power to manage the affairs of others come to be exercised by busy bodies. In order words, such a party must be found by the Court to have been subjected to some recognised legal injury. The traditional justification for this is two fold. Locus standi is part of the separation ' of powers. While law is for all, adjudication can only be between parties. Court powers are State powers and its orders are enforced by public force. Such enforcement will restrict or enlarge the freedoms of others. Clearly judicial process is not intended to deal with some one's rights except at its instance. Only legislation can undertake such task.
5. The pledge of the Anglo Saxon jurisprudence is to find remedies to those who suffered injuries. Correspondingly the locus standi is confined only to the one who suffered injuries. This limitation on application of locus standi applies with particular relevaece to the rights to property. The concept of property rights mandatorily requires exclusion of third party intervetion with the owner's right to enjoy his own property. The common law concept of property excludes such an interference of the third party. Courts will not, therefore, grant locus standi to a third party in property matters. The extent of this universally accepted restriction on invocation of Court's jurisdiction in the case of property rights is similar to the exclusionary rule of third party in law of torts and contracts. The only difference is that the extent of restriction is greater in the domain of property law than in the domain of contract law. We are of the opinion that public law in this regard is not different from private law. Our courts are open to any party to repair damage suffered by that party. This rule which has been accepted for ages is at the bottom of all private interest litigation as different from the newly introduced concept of public interest litigation.
6. But even in the domain of public interest litigation a third party will not be welcome and will be accorded no standing to question statutory orders relating to property so long as the owner and enjoyer of the property entertains no grievance and suffers no injury. The public interest litigation has not totally done away with the concept of locus standi. Its main concern is with the protection of what are called personal rights not with the enforcement of property rights. What is more, public interest litigation cannot ignore either the personal rights or the property rights of the owner of those rights. The concept of locus standi in public interest litigation is loosened for the purpose of protecting the interests of a third party who is assumed to be willing but not a position to come before the Court to ventilate his grievances. But even in public interest litigation there must be an injury suffered by a party for the redressal of which he could not apply to the Court. Where the real owner is psychologically unwilling to apply for the remedy, the Court will not force a property relief down his throat at the instance of a third party. No surgeon, however, eminent will be permitted to operate upon an unwilling patient. In the end the Court in public interest litigation too must be in a position to grant relief to the property owner that suffered legal, injury. When the owner of property is the beneficiary of an impugned order, the question of such a person suffering an injury or his being willing to apply to court for relief cannot arise. He had already accepted the benefit of that order. His desire to get the order set aside and obtaining relief from the, courts being a condition precedent for the exercise of Court's jurisdiction either at his own instance or at the instance of a third party, cannot be fulfilled in such cases. A third party cannot, therefore, attempt to do what the owner himself is unwilling to do. It follows that in relation to a dispute about property and its ownership and enjoyment a third party which is unconnected with that properly in any manner shall be totally barred from the Courts. No locus standi can be granted by the Courts to such a third party even in public interest litigation.
7. If 'A' the owner of a black acre is willing to surrender his land in acquisition proceedings to the State it will be incredible for the Courts to hold that 'B' who is an utter stranger and who has no interest in that properly has a right to plead before Courts that the acquisition by the State of A's property is illegal and that acquisition should, therefore, be set aside and that the black acre should be owned and possessed only by 'A'. The consequence of granting standing to 'B' and entertaining such a complaint at the instance of a stranger like 'B' would be to force upon the original owner the ownership of the property on 'A' which he wants to discard and part with. After all there is no law which lakes away A's liberty to own the black acre or not to own. In such a case, granting of standing to a third party even in the name of public interest litigation will annhilate A's liberty without reason or rhyme. It is the inalienable right of 'A' as the property-owner to deal with his property without being controlled by the vagrant desires of busy bodies of our society like 'B'. Applying the above reasoning we hold that the statutory exemption granted to the real owner in this case which does not cause any legal injury to the owner and which the owner himself is not willing to challenge cannot be questioned by the petitioner third parties.
8. We are clearly of the opinion that even the extended doctrine of locus standi under the public interest litigation would not enable a stranger to challenge the validity of a Government Order, such as the one which has been issued in this case. The effect of the Government Order is merely to grant exemption in relation to the excess land subject to certain conditions. If the exemption is refused, the land would have been treated as vacant land and acquired by the Government. If the exemption has been granted and accepted by the owner the land will be held by the owner subject to those conditions, in either case, the concept of ownership would not permit the intervention of a third party into the domain of enjoyment of the land by the owner. This is the view which one of us (P. A. Choudary, J.) has recently taken in Secunderabad Whole Sale Cloth Merchants' Association (Registered under the Societies Registration Act) Represented by its President Mr. Soma Venkateswara Rao v. The Government of Andhra Pradesh, (1987) 2 Andh LT 957. That has also been a case which arose under the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1976. In that case it has been held :
'No objection raised to the maintainability of a writ petition on the ground that the petitioner is not an aggrieved person should be summarily rejected. That is so even after the entry of that much misunderstood concept of public interest litigation into the field of our Constitutional Jurisprudence which ex-Chief Justice Hidayatullah once openly condemned rather harshly as no more than publicity interest litigation. The reason why such objection deserves serious consideration is that principle of locus standi and the doctrine of aggrieved persons are the very foundations on which the edifice of Judicial Process is erected. These are the ancient principles that separate the area of judicial process from the spheres of executive and the legislative activity preserving the acceptability and protecting the respectability of the Court's jurisdiction. The doctrines of locus standi and aggrieved persons embody in themselves some aspects of that great fundamental constitutional principles of separation of powers. That strict observance of these ground rules is of so paramount importance that their violations can easily lead to loss of judicial credibility and effectiveness. The constitutional train can reach safely and surely to its destination moving only on those rails. It follows that even under the public interest litigation the Courts should not and ought not rush in where the Constitutional principles shudder to enter. The Court's jurisdiction is to render justice to conflicting parties. The law is declared by the Courts in that process only to settle the dispute before the parties. Where 'A' in free exercise of his will allows the State to acquire his land, the Courts will not hear the complaint of 'B' against such acquisition on the ground of constitutional violations. The Courts can hear the complaints only of an aggrieved person but not that of a busy body or a legal vagabond.'
9. We endorse those observations. For the above reasons we uphold the order under appeal passed by the learned single Judge denying the locus standi to the appellants to file the writ petition.
10. Sri Venkataramana however argued that this matter was concluded by a judgment of a three - Judge Bench decision reported in D. Satyanarayana v. N. T. Rama Rao, : AIR1988AP69 (FB). He has read para 14 at page 73 of that report. We are not surprised to find nothing there said relevantly on the question considered by us here. We accordingly see no justification in his plea and dismiss this writ appeal with costs. Advocate's fee Rs. 250/-.