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TMI Blog1961 (11) TMI 88X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... iod of three years commencing with 1952 on payment of Rs. 22,500 as the first year's premium and of a further sum of Rs. 7,500 to be held as security by the Raja for being set off ultimately towards the premium for the third year. The premium agreed to be paid for each year was Rs. 22,500. After payment of security money and the first year's premium, the plaintiff began collecting the biri leaves from the jungles from the year 1952, the collection season commencing from the beginning of May and lasting for about a month and a half. In the middle of December 1952 the plaintiff was served with a notice issued from the office of the Additional Collector of Palamau by which he was asked to show cause why the lease or license granted to him by defendant No. 1 should not be cancelled and why he should not be made to pay Rs. 22,500 to the State of Bihar for the 1952 season, because the estate of the Raja had vested in the State under a notification dated the 14th November, 1951. The plaintiff showed cause, but the Additional Collector rejected it on the 31st January 1953 and referred the matter to the Government of Bihar for a final decision. But before the decision of the Governm ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 951, the State of Bihar did not take possession of his estate before the 13th June 1952 and did not cease to realise from the defendant the land revenue and cess for his entire estate for the lists following the said notification. It is, therefore, contended that, if the plaintiff, with full knowledge of all the facts, chose to pay the premium over again to the State of Bihar, the loss incurred thereon should be borne by the plaintiff alone. The last assertion was that, as fifty per cent of the yield of the leaves to the plaintiff came from this defendant's bakasht and zirat land, which never vested in the State of Bihar, the plaintiff was not entitled to recover even the security money from him inasmuch as he had collected biri leaves from such lands in the second year as well without paying any royalty or premium to this defendant for the leaves collected for 1953. 4. Defendant No. 2, on the other hand, asserted that, inasmuch as the plaintiff took the lease from defendant No. 1 with full knowledge of want of title from that defendant to the jungles, the payment made by him. to the said defendant in 1952 should not exonerate him from his liability to pay the premium for that ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... f the plaintiff from 1952 onwards. The finding of the lower court that the estate of the Raja had vested in the State of Bihar by virtue of the notification dated the 14th November 1951, issued Under Section 3 of the Bihar Land' Reforms Act, 1950, has not been challenged during the hearing of this appeal. But Mr. S. N. Dutt counsel for the Raja Bahadur, defendant No. 1, relied On certain event? which admittedly took place after this date of vesting. In spite of the notification, the Raja was left in possession of the estate. Exhibit A and B are letters addressed to the Raja by the Tauzi Deputy Collector and the Additional Collector of Palamau in February and April 1952 demanding arrears of cess from him. Exhibits C series are chalans showing deposits of cess and revenue by the Raja in March and May 1952. Exhibit D is a proclamation to the public in general issued by the Additional Collector on the 13th June 1952 that the estate of the Raja had vested in the State of Bihar with effect from that date. Admittedly the local officers took possession of the estate of the Raja on this date on behalf of the Government. It is necessary to state here why possession was not taken over by ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... t a notification dated the 14th November 1951 in respect of the estate of the Raja of Ranks was published. Section 4 of the Act lays down the consequences f the vesting; and those consequences ensue on the publication of the notification under Section 3(1). Hence, the State of Bihar way entitled to take possession of the Raja's estate immediately after the 14th November 1951 in the present case. It is well settled that there can be no estoppel against a statute. Further, there was no question of the Raja being misled by Exhibits A and B through which arrears of revenue and cess were demanded or by exhibits C series and D. The law of estoppel is embodied in Section 115 of the Evidence Act and, in order to bring a case within its purview, there must be a representation by one party, the representation must be a representation of fact, the representation must have been made with the intention that the other party should act upon the faith of the statement, and the other party must believe the representation to be true and act upon it. In the present case, there was no question of the Raja of Ranka being misled by the actions of the tauzi Deputy Collector and the Additional Collect ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... Bahadur's title, as it is well settled that there is no estoppel against a statute. It was further observed that once it was held that the estate of the Raja Bahadur vested absolutely in the State on a particular date by virtue of a notification under Section 3 of the Act, ''then all realisations made, compensation paid and proceedings taken in respect of the said estates constituted the ultra vires acts of the various Government servants, and, as a matter of law, were inadmissible to raise estoppel against the Government. They were obviously the outcome of their ignorance of the correct legal position or mistakes on their part, induced presumably by the proceedings taken by the plaintiff to avoid vesting. The Government was, therefore, not bound by them and was, not estopped from denying the plaintiff's title. Apart from ibis, all these collections were made by the Government officials in exercise of their power or discretion vested in them by relevant rules or laws and not in pursuance of any implied authority derived from the Government and, therefore, the Government cannot be bound by those acts. The facts of that case were similar to those of the present case. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... . 1 has stated that the plaintiff was doing the work of collecting biri leaves in that district since 1938-39; and this witness has been looking after the affairs of the plaintiff in the district since about 1947. Moreover, one of the decisions of the Supreme Court declaring the Act to be constitutional had been made long before the execution of the patta dated the 12th April 1952 and the second decision of the Supreme Court to the same effect had been made about a month before the registration of the patta. It may be recalled that the Additional Collector had given a notice on the 21st December 1952 to the plaintiff that, in as much as the estate of the Raja of Ranka had vested in the Government since the 14th November 1951, the lease executed by the plaintiff in favour of the Raja was not legal, valid and the same will be treated as cancelled, unless the plaintiff deposited the sum of Rs. 22,500 as royalty to the credit of the Government for the year 1952. But in his letter dated the 18th April 1953 from the Additional Secretary to the Government to the Deputy Commissioner of Palamau, a copy of which was forwarded to the plaintiff by the Additional Collector, it was stated that t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... . But in the present case the property was vested at law in the Government and no other person had any equitable interest therein. 10. Mr. Dutt also relied on Section 27 of the Indian Sale of Goods Act, which corresponds' to Section 41 of the Transfer of Property Act. These Sections provide for the consequences: of the transfer of a property by an ostensible owner and they are also based on the principle of the law of estoppel. But, in order to attract the application of these provisions, it is necessary to show that the transferor is the ostensible owner of the property by the consent, express or implied, of the true owner and the transferee has acted in good faith, taking reasonable care to ascertain that the transferor had power to transfer. It was contended that the consent of the Government was implied in as much as possession of the Raja's estate was not taken before the 13th June 1952. But the implied consent of the real owner cannot be inferred, unless the real owner acquiesces in the acts of the transferor in dealing with the property; and such a consent on the part of the real owner cannot be inferred merely by his silence, unless it is such as to induce a belief ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... appellants and handed the consignment notes to a third agent, who reconsigned the cocoa. to the appellants. The respondent sued the appellants for damages for conversion. It was found that the appellants bought the cocoa in good. faith and for the full price. In these circumstances, it was held by the Privy Council that the respondent by his conduct was precluded from setting up his title against the appellants and accordingly the action failed. But in both these cases, agency was proved and the conduct of the principal misled the purchaser, whereas in the present case it has been found that there was nothing in the conduct of the Government to induce the plaintiff to believe that the Raja was acting on its behalf. The last case Satgur prasad v. Hari Narain Das 59 I A 147: AIR 1932 PC 89) cited by Mr. Dutt, was decided on the basis of Section 88 of the Trusts Act, because it was found that the defendant stood in a fiduciary relation to the plaintiff and that he procured the conveyance by taking advantage of this relationship. In the present case, however, there was no such relation between the Government and the plaintiff. 11. In view of the foregoing discussion, defendant No. 1 (o ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... biri leaves in 1952; and, as he had to make double payment on account of the misrepresentation of the Raja who did not admittedly inform the plaintiff that a notification vesting his estate in the State of Bihar had been published, the Raja who cannot take advantage of his own misrepresentation, must disgorge the amount. Another reason given by Mr. Dutt was that advantages to the plaintiff and to the Raja were reciprocal in the present case; but this is not correct inasmuch as the plaintiff had to pay for the biri leaves of 1952 to the Government as well. 14. The third reason advanced by Mr. Dutt was that the plaintiff could not get any decree against the Raja, because Section 65 of the Indian Contract Act does not apply to the present case, inasmuch as the contract was not wholly void or even partly void. But, in view of the earlier finding that the Raja had no transferable interest in the jungles in question since the 14th November 1951 and that the provision of Section 27 of the Indian Sale of Goods Act does not apply, this argument has no substance. Section 65 reads thus: When an agreement is discovered to be void or when a contract becomes void, any person who has received any ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... e aforesaid decision of the Privy Council was distinguished on the ground that the contract for sale was based on. mutual mistake of the parties as to the true nature of the right of the transferor. But in another single Bench decision of this Court in Abhi Singh v. Daso Bhogla AIR 1952 Pat 455, a contrary view was taken and it was held that Section 65 applied in the case of a transfer in contravention of Section 46 of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act. The earlier Patna decision does not appear to have been considered in the later decision but the later decision is based on an observation of the Privy Council in Mohan Manucha v. Manzoor Ahmad Khan AIR 1943 PC 29. in that case, a judgment-debtor had mortgaged the property under the control of the Collector under paragraph 11 of Schedule III to the Code of Civil Procedure without the permission of the Collector; and it was held that inasmuch as the mortgagor had no right to transfer the property, the agreement was void since its inception and Section 65 of the Contract Act was attracted, In arriving at that conclusion, Sir Ceorge Rankin observed on behalf of the Judicial Committee thus: The principle underlying Section 65 is that a right ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... tiff any relief under Older 41, Rule 33 against the defendants again, whom the' suit was dismissed. But the observations in these two decisions were based on facts completely different from those in the present case. In the present case the plaintiff prayed for the following reliefs, namely,-- (1) A declaration whether the lease granted by defendant No. 1 in favour of the plaintiff On 12-4-52 is valid and binding or not on the defendant No. 2 on the defendant No. 2 talking possession of the defendant No. l's estate purporting to act according to the Bihar Land Reforms Act of 1950. (ii) On such declaration (a) if the lease be declared valid a decree be made in favour of the plaintiff against defendant No. 2 for Rs. 22,500 with interest at 6 per cent per year with effect from 8-5-1953 till realisation and for Rs. 10,125 or for such sum of money as the court may think proper, as compensation for loss of profit for 1954 season; and (b) if. on the other hand the lease be declared invalid and not binding on the defendant 2 a decree for Rs. 30,000 otherwise for Rs. 7,500 out of Rs. 30,000 with interest at 6 per cent per year with effect from 12-4-52 till realisation be made in fav ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... eriod prior to the date of the suit may be awarded, if there is an agreement for the payment of interest at a fixed rate, or it is payable by the usage of trade having the force of law, or under the provision of any substantive law entitling the plaintiff to recover interest as for instance the court may award interest at the rate of six per cent, per annum: when no rate of interest is specified in a promissory note or bill of exchange under Section 80, Negotiable Instruments Act (see Bemgal N g ur Railway Co. Ltd. v. Ruttanjj Ramji. In the present case, there wan no contract: for payment of interest; and (SIC)rest by way of damages cannot be allowed as there is nothing on the record to justify any claim for compensation or damages against any of the defendants. The plaintiff is not entitled to any interest during the pendency of the suit either, particularly because the principal issue between the parties was debatable. This cross-objection must, therefore, also fail, 20. In the result, the appeal is allowed and the cross-objections are dismissed. The plaintiff is not entitled to get any decree against defendant No. 2 and he is entitled to a decree against defendant- No. 1 for Rs. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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