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TMI Blog1967 (3) TMI 105X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... is no valid -ground for interfering with the decision of the Government of Andhra Pradesh rejecting your application for grant of mining lease for asbestos over an area of Ac.1 13-50 in Brahmanapalii village, Cuddapah District, Andhra Pradesh. Your application for revision is, therefore, rejected. The facts leading to the two appeals are as follows : In response to a notification dated January 8, 1964 published in the State Gazette by the Andhra Pradesh Government inviting applications under r. 58 of the rules framed under the Mines and Minerals (Regulation and Development) Act, 1957 (hereinafter referred to as the Rules and the Act) the appellant submitted two applications in the prescribed form viz., Form I for areas aggregating Ac. 113-50 in village Brahmanapalli and Ac. 13-10 in village Ippatta both in the district of Cuddapah for mining asbestos. Respondent No. 3 also made similar applications on the same date. According to the appellant his applications complied with all the requirements of Form I while those of respondent No. 3 were defective in some respects. Besides the appellant and the respondent No. 3, there was only one other person who applied for a prospec ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... stice and fairplay requiring the divulgence of the grounds were violated and that a personal hearing should have been given to the appellant before the disposal of the revision applications. We are not called upon in this case to go into the merits of the case but only to examine the question as to whether it was necessary for the Government of India to give reasons for its decision in view of the provisions of the Act and the Rules or aliunde because the decision was liable to be questioned in appeal to this Court. It is necessary to take note of a few provisions ofthe Act and the relevant rules framed thereunder to ascertain the scope of a party's right to, apply for a lease and the powers and duties of the Government in accepting or rejecting the some. The preamble to the Act shows that its object was to provide for the regulation of mines and the development of minerals under the control of the Union of India. Under s. 4(1) no person can undertake any prospecting or mining operations in any area, except under and in accordance with the terms and conditions of a prospecting licence or a mining lease granted under the Act and the Rules. Under sub-s. (2) of the section ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... accompanied by a fee of ₹ 200/-, a deposit of ₹ 5001and an income-tax clearance certificate. Under r. 26 the State Government is obliged to give reasons for refusal to grant a mining lease. Any person aggrieved by an order made by the State Government may prefer an application for revision under r. 54 in Form 'N'. In every such application against the order of the State Government refusing to grant a mining lease, a person to whom a lease has been granted must be impleaded as a party. R. 55 originally framed in 1960 was amended in July 1965. Under the amended r.55 the position is as follows: (1) On receipt of an application for revision under r. 54, copies thereof shall be sent to the State Government and to all the impleaded parties calling upon them to make such comments as they may like to make within three months of the date of issue of the communication and if no comments are received within that period, it is to be presumed that the party omitting to make such comments has none to make. (2) On receipt of the comments from any party under Sub-rule (1), copies thereof have to be, sent to the other parties calling upon them to make further comments as ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... properly examined by the State Government, or that the State Government had not before it all the available material to make up its mind with respect thereto before grant in a licence. In a case where complaints of this nature are made, of necessity, the Central Government has to scrutinise matters which were not canvassed before the State Government. A question may arise in such cases as to whether the order of the Central Government in the form in which it was made in this case would be sufficient, specially in view of the fact that the correctness thereof may be tested in appeal to this Court. It is now well-settled that in exercising its powers of revision under r. 55 the Central Government discharges functions which are quasi judicial : see Shivji Nathubhai v. The Union of India Ors. ([1960]2 S.C.R. 775. ) and M. P. Industries v. Union ([1966] 2 S. C. R. 466.). In the latter case one of us (our present Chief Justice) said (at p. 471) : The entire scheme of the rules posits a judicial procedure and the Central Government is constituted as a tribunal to dispose of the said revision. Indeed this Court in Shivji Nathubhai v. The Union of India (supra) rules that the Cent ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... he State Government, this Court, in appeal, may find it difficult to ascertain which are the grounds which weighed with the Central Government in upholding the order of the State Government. In such circumstances, what is known as a speaking order is called for. The order of the Central Government of June 22, 1966 is so worded as to be open to the construction that the reviewing authority was primarily concerned with finding out whether any grounds had been made out for interfering with the decision of the State Government. In other words, the Central Government was not so much concerned to examine the grounds or the reasons for the decision of the State Government but to find out whether here was any cause for disturbing the same Prima facie the order does not show that the reviewing authority had any thought of expressing its own reasons for maintaining the decision arrived at. If detailed reasons had been given by the State Government and the Central Government had indicated clearly that it was accepting the reasons for the decision of the State Government, one would be in a position to say that the reasons, for the grant of a lease to a person other than the appellant were ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 111(3) of the Indian Companies Act, 1956 which had since come into operation. The Joint Secretary, Ministry of Finance, who heard the appeals declined to order registration of transfers practically on grounds similar to those put forward by the High Court of Bombay. Thereafter, the original holder of the shares transferred some shares to his son and some to his daughter-in-id' , and the transferees requested the company to register the transfers. The directors once more refused. Against the resolution of the directors, separate appeals were preferred by the son and daughter-in-law of the original holder of the shares. The Deputy Secretary to the Government of India set aside the resolution passed by the board of directors and directed the company to register the transfers. No reasons were however given for such order. The company came up in appeal to this Court under Art. 136 of the Constitution. According to the judgment of the majority of Judges, the exercise of authority by the Central Government was judicial as it had to adjudicate upon the rights of contesting parties when there was a lis between them. It was observed in that case that If the Central Government acts as ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ernment must deal. with such case in a quasi-judicial manner giving an opportunity to the claimants to state their case in the light of the report of the Deputy Commissioner. The appellants were also entitled to know the reason why their claim for the grant of money or pension was rejected by Government and how they were considered as not falling within the class of persons who it was clearly intended by the Act to be compensated in this manner........ As the order of Government does not fulfil the elementary requirements of a quasijudicial process we do not consider it necessary to order a remit to the High Court. In the result this Court set aside the order of the Government and directed the disposal of the case in the light of the remarks made. In M. P. Industries v. Union([196] 1 S.C.R. 466) the order of the Central Government rejecting the revision application under r. 55 of the Mineral Concession Rules was couched in exactly the same language as the order in appeal before us (see at p. 475 of the report) One cannot help feeling that the Ministry concerned have a special form which is to be used whenever a review application is to be rejected. This may easily lead anyon ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... A Judge is trained to look at things objectively, uninfluenced by considerations of policy or expediency; but, an executive officer generally looks at things from the standpoint of policy and expediency. The habit of mind of an executive officer so formed cannot be expected to change from function to function or from act to act. So it, is essential that some restrictions shall be imposed on tribunals in the matter of passing orders affecting the rights of parties; and the least they should do is to give reasons for their orders. Even in the case of appellate courts invariably reasons are given, except when they dismiss an appeal or revision in limine and that is because the appellate or revisional court agrees with the reasoned judgment of the subordinate court or there are no legally permissible grounds to interfere with it. But the same reasoning cannot apply to an appellate tribunal, for as often as not the order of the first tribunal is laconic and does not give any reasons. That apart, when we insist upon reasons; we do not prescribe any particular form or scale of the reasons. The extent and the nature of the reasons depend upon case of affirmance where the original tribunal ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... affirms the decision for the reasons given by the lower authority, one can assume that the reviewing authority found the reasons given by the lower authority as acceptable to it; but where the lower authority itself fails to give any reason other than that the successful applicant was an old lessee and the reviewing authority does not even refer to that ground, this Court has to grope in the dark for finding out reasons for upholding or rejecting the decision of the reviewing authority. After all a tribunal which exercises judicial or quasi-judicial powers can certainly indicate its mind as to why it acts in a particular way and when important rights of parties of far-reaching consequence to them are adjudicated upon in a summary fashion, without giving a personal hearing where proposals and counter-proposals are made and examined, the least that can be expected is that the tribunal should tell the party why the decision is going against him in all cases where the law gives a further right of appeal. On behalf of the respondents, it was contended that r. 55 which provided for a revision did not envisage the filing of fresh pleadings and fresh material but only invited comments of ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... this Court in Nandrant Hunatram, Calcutta v. Union of India(A.I.R. 1966 S.C.R. 1922). There, one of the points made by the appellant in the appeal to this Court was that the order of the Central Government, in review, upholding the action of the State Government cancelling the mining lease granted to the appellant was bad inasmuch as no reasons were given. It was pointed out in the judgment in that case that the facts there were so notorious that the reasons for the action of the State Government and the confirmation of its order by the Central Government were too obvious and could not possibly be questioned by anybody. There the partners of the appellant firm had fallen out among themselves and none of them was willing to spend money on the colliery with the result that the work came to a stand-still and the colliery began to get flooded. At this juncture, Government stepped in and made a promise to the essential workmen that their wages would be paid and this saved the colliery. Thereafter the Chief Inspector of Mines was informed by one of the partners of the appellant firm that the other partners were preventing him from making payment for running expenses of the colliery and t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ns for the action of the State were so obvious that it was not necessary, on the facts of the case, to repeat them in the order of the Central Government. Our attention was also drawn to another judgment of this Court in Commissioner of Income-tax v. K. V. pilliah(43 1. TR. 411.). One of the questions in that case before the High Court of Mysore ([1966] T. S. C. R). 466 under s. 66(2) of the Indian Income-tax Act was, whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the Incometax Appellate Tribunal was justified in sustaining both the addition ,of ₹ 41 142/as income from business and ₹ 7,000/as cash credits, and whether such addition did not result in double taxation. It was held by this Court that the question whether ₹ 41,142/was liable to be taxed fell to be determined under. the first question. In respect of the other amount of ₹ 7,000/the Income-tax Officer had held that the explanation of the assessee was untrue and the Appellate Assistant Commissioner and the Tribunal had agreed with that view. In this setting of facts, it ,,was said by this Court: The Income-tax Appellate Tribunal is the final factfinding authority and normally it s ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nsation Appeal Tribunal, Ex parte Shaw([1951]1 K.B. 711.) an application was made in the King's Bench Division in England for an order of certiorari for the quashing of a decision reached by the Compensation Appeal Tribunal dismissing an appeal by Shaw against an award to him of compensation for loss of employment as a clerk to a Hospital Board payable under the National Health Service (Transfer of Officers and Compensation) Regulations, 1948. There the question of the practice and procedure with regard to the issue of a writ of certiorari was gone into at some length. The tribunal in that case had made a speaking order. It was contended by the counsel for the tribunal that the King's Bench Division had no power to examine the order in the case before it on certiorari oil the ground that certiorari went only to defect of jurisdiction. This was turned down and the Divisional Court held that it had jurisdiction to quash by certiorari the decision of an inferior tribunal when the latter had embodied the reasons for its decision in its order and those reasons are bad in law. For our purpose, we need only refer to the observations of Lord Goddard, C.J. at p. 724 of the report wh ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nherent in its exercise of that jurisdiction. . From the standpoint of fair name of the tribunals and also in the interests of the public, they should be, expected to give reasons when they set aside an order of an inferior tribunal.......... Further, if reasons for an order are given, there will be less scope for arbitrary or partial exercise of powers and the order 'ex facie' will indicate whether extraneous circumstances were taken into consideration by the tribunal in passing the order. Refrence may also be made to Ramayya v. State of Andhra (I.L.R. 1956 Andhra 712 ) and Annamalai v. State of Madras(A.I.R. 1957 Andhra Pradesh 739). To the same effect is the judgment of the Kerala High Court in Joseph v. Superintendent of Post Offices, Kottayam(A.I.R. 1952 Madras 276). We have already commented that the order of the Central Government in this case is couched in the same language as was used in the case before this court in M.P. Industries v. Union([1966] 1 S.C.R. 466) in August 1965. The old rule 55 was replaced by a new rule which ,came into force on 19th July 1965. Whereas the old rule directed the Central Government to consider comments on the petition of revie ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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