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TMI Blog1931 (3) TMI 29X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... contend, as they did in the High Court, that no appeal is competent, and this question has been argued before their Lordships as a preliminary point. It is with it alone that this judgment is concerned. 3. By the Act above referred to, which their Lordships will call for convenience the local Act, a Board of Trustees was constituted and was invested with very wide powers for the purpose of carrying out improvement schemes within the Municipal limits of Calcutta. It was obvious that for this purpose the necessity would arise for tlra compulsory acquisition of land on a large scale, and the Bengal Government no doubt thought that it would facilitate the proceedings. of the trustees if they had a special code of their own under which such acquisitions should be made instead of leaving this matter to be dealt with by the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, which was of general application throughout British India. 4. Under the general Act the land is acquired by the Local Government. It is in the first place valued by the Collector, who makes an "award" which fixe the sum to be offered for the land by Government. Any person interested who does not accept the award may then requir ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... e Calcutta Improvement Act, 1911," and provides that, notwithstanding anything contained in that Act, an appeal shall lie to the Bengal High Court in certain cases, one of which is where the President grants a certificate that the case is a fit one for appeal but subject to certain definite limitations therein set out. 8. The reason for this somewhat unusual course of legislation is, their Lordships have no doubt, to be found in what had happened previously in Bombay. There, in 1898, the local legislature enacted a City Improvement exact (Bombay Act 4 of 1898), upon which it is probable that the Calcutta Act was to some extent modelled. The Bombay Act set up a similar Tribunal to perform the functions of the Court under the Land Acquisition Act, and enacted that the award of the Tribunal should be final, subject to an appeal to the High Court in any case in which the President should certify the case as a fit one for appeal. The validity of this Act was questioned in Hart Panclurang v. Secretary of State (1903) 27 Bom. 424 , and Sir Lawrence Jenkins, then Chief Justice of Bombay, held that this particular provision, giving the limited right of appeal to the High Court, was ul ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... om the Land Acquisition Act, could be held to include the new Section 54, an award of the Tribunal would not, by the express words of the local Act, come within its provisions. 14. It is upon the new Sub-section 26(2), introduced by the Act of 1921 into the Land Acquisition Act, that reliance is placed. The argument addressed to their Lordships is that this subsection must be read into the local Act, with the effect that every award of the Tribunal must now be deemed to be a decree within the meaning of the Civil Procedure Code, and therefore as their Lordships understand, ex vi termini appealable to His Majesty in Council under the Letters Patent of the High Court. It is said that this amendment of itself is sufficient to displace the grounds upon which the Board held in the Rangoon case that no appeal lay. If effect were given to this argument it would seem to follow that the amendment of Section 54 was wholly superfluous, and the somewhat strange result would be arrived at, that though the provision of the amending Act by which the right of appeal to His Majesty in Council is expressly given was excluded in the case of awards by the Tribunal, they were nevertheless to be so app ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... y. 18. It seems to be no less logical to hold that where certain provisions from an existing Act have been incorporated into a subsequent Act, no addition to the former Act, which is not expressly made applicable to the subsequent Act, can be deemed to be incorporated in it, at all events if it is possible for the subsequent Act to function effectually without the addition. So Lord Westbury says in Ex parte St. Sepulchre (1864) 33 L.J. Ch. 372: If the particular Act gives in itself a complete rule on the subject matter, the expression of that rule would undoubtedly amount to an exception of the subject matter of the rule out of the general Act : " see also London, Chatham and Dover Railway v. Wandsworth Board of Works 8 C.P. 185, 19. Turning next to the terms of the local Act road with the modifying Act of the Governor-General in Council (Act 18 of 1911), their Lordships are of opinion that the local code contains in itself a sufficient answer to the contention with which they are dealing. The joint effect of the two enactments was, as their Lordships have already pointed out, to give a special and strictly limited right of appeal to the High Court from an award of the Tr ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ion now before them, their Lordships are not unmindful of the fact that an opposite conclusion had been arrived at by the High Court in Calcutta. 23. The question of competency was discussed on the application of the Secretary of State in the present case for the necessary certificate, and in granting it the learned Judges thought it proper merely to follow a previous decision of the High Court in which, in a similar case, it had been held by Sir Lancelot Sanderson, then Chief Justice of Bengal, with the concurrence of Walmsley, J., that an appeal lay to His Majesty in Council. When that case came before the Board [Secy. of State v. Tarak Chandra, Sadhukan A.I.R. 1927 P.C. 172], the question of competency was again raised, but it was not found necessary to decide it, the appeal being dismissed upon other grounds. 24. The judgment of the learned Chief Justice proceeded upon the ground that Section 26(2), Land Acquisition Act, as amended by Act 18 of 1921, should be read as part of the Improvement Trust Act of 1911; that the award of the Tribunal was thereby constituted a decree from which an appeal lay to the High Court, and that from the decree of the High Court an appeal lay to ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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