MANI Vs. PREMIER TYRES LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) I am satisfied that, in no view of the matter, can the company which is the respondent in these three petitions be regarded as a proper party to the proceedings in court pursuant to references under S.18 of the Travancore Land Acquisition Act under the provisions of which the properties belonging to the petitioners have been compulsorily acquired, that so far as those proceedings are concerned the company is no more than a wayfarer, or, as Lord Greene, M. R., chose to put it in 1943 (2) All. ER 525, a man in the street, and that in allowing the company's application and adding it as a party to the proceedings the court below acted without jurisdiction in the sense in which that word is used in S.115 of the Civil Procedure Code. True, S.37 of the Travancore Act like S.53 of the Indian Act attracts the provisions of the Civil Procedure Code to proceedings before court but there is no provision of the Code which empowers a court to invite a rank outsider to join in a proceeding before it O.1 R.10 which governs the matter authorises the joinder only of a person who ought to have been joined or whose presence may be necessary for a proper adjudication, and the company, as we shall presently see, has neither qualification.

(2.) The Travancore Act unlike the Indian Act makes no provision for the acquisition of land for a company. S.6 thereof makes no reference to land being needed for a company; there is no part corresponding to Part VII of the Indian Act; and while S.35A, which corresponds to S.50 of the Indian Act, provides for acquisition at the cost of a local authority and for the authority being heard in an adjudication regarding the amount of the compensation, it says nothing about acquisition at the cost of a company or of the appearance of a company in a proceeding under the Act. And, consistently with the provisions of law under which the acquisition in these cases purported to proceed, neither the notification under S.4(1) nor the declaration under S.6 refers to the land being required by the company they only say that the land is required for a public purpose. The company has therefore nothing to do with the acquisition. But, it is said on behalf of the respondent company, that it has entered into some private arrangement with the State Government by which it is bound to pay the Government whatever Government has to pay for the land and that it is therefore vitally interested in intervening in the proceedings to see that proper materials are placed before the court so that it may make a proper order. The apprehension that in the company's absence the case may go by default might be well founded or ill founded I am not concerned with that but, assuming that what is stated on behalf of the company is true, the company has at best only a commercial interest in the proceedings and not a legal interest which alone can justify its joinder. The cases in 1892 (I) Ch. 487, 1943 (2) All. ER 525 and ILR 1962 (2) Kerala 699 throw considerable light on this question and that light clearly shows that the order of the lower court is without jurisdiction and has to be set aside in revision.

(3.) It is argued that S.35A of the Travancore Act and S.50 of the Indian Act are only declaratory of the general law and are embodied in these statutes only by way of abundant caution. On the contrary it seems to me that these provisions are born of the consciousness that, under the ordinary rules of procedure, the third party at whose cost the acquisition is being made would have no right of audience. And it is significant that neither provision authorises the joinder of the third party and that the proviso to S.50(2) of the Indian Act disentitles the third party to demand a reference under S.18.