MARY Vs. KERALA STATE ELECTRICITY BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ALL the appellants in this batch of writ appeals were the petitioners in the original petitions that were dismissed by a learned Single Judge of this court by the judgment under appeal and they are employees of the Kerala State Electricity Board,for short the Board.The appellants who were originally functioning as junior assistants did not possess the test qualification prescribed by Ext.P1 order passed by the Board for promotion as senior assistants.They were however clamouring for promotion.This gave rise to a dispute and that dispute was settled by an agreement that provided that the appellants would be exempted from the test qualification for a period of two years and that they would be promoted in the meantime.On the terms of this settlement they were promoted on the basis of orders similar to Ext.P -3,dated 24th August 1970 produced in O.P.No.3442 of 1975,Writ Appeal No.375 of 1975.These promotion orders provided that the promotions were provisional that the promoter will have no right to the post to which they were promoted and that they would be reverted in case they did not pass the test within the period of exemption of two years.The appellants did not pass the tests within the period but they were allowed to continue as senior assistants for a few more years.Ultimately it was decided to revert them.It was this decision that was challenged by the applicants under Article 226 of the Con­stitution.The main contention raised was that the prescrip­tion of conditions of service by Ext.P -1 was invalid and that those conditions have no effect and were devoid of any force;for the only way conditions of service could be laid down was by making regulations as provided by section 79(c)of the Electricity(Supply)Act,1948,hereafter referred to as the Supply Act.This contention was negatived and the petitions were dismissed.The same contention was repeated before us in these appeals.

(2.) SECTION 79 of the Supply Act is in these terms:" œ79.Power to make regulations."The Board may make regulations not inconsistent with this Act and the rules made thereunder to provide for all or any of the following matters,namely: - "

(3.) THE words œshall would or œmust in a statute are ordinarily mandatory and the word œmay directory.No doubt the words are often used by the legislature inter -changeably disregarding their literal meaning makes it necessary for courts to resort to construction in order to discover the real intention of the legislature.In so construing it would be necessary to start with a presumption that the legislature intended to use the words in their usual and natural meaning.If such a meaning,however,leads to absurdity or great inconvenience or for some other reason is clearly,contrary to the obvious intention of the legislature,the words which are ordinarily mandatory in their nature will be construed as directory,and vice -versa.Yet the construction of mandatory words as directory and directory words as mandatory should not be lightly adopted.The opposite meaning must be unequivocally evidenced before it is accepted as the true meaning(see Crawford Statutory Construction at page 519 at 522 ).So the Supreme Court ruled that where the obvious intent of the legislature was that a surrender deed must be executed in the manner provided by the statute,a surrender deed executed in any other manner would not be effective(see A.I.R.1975 S.C.915 ).The same view has been taken by the Supreme Court in the earlier decisions,referred to in para 25 of the judg­ment in Ramachandra Keshav Adke(Dead)by Lrs .v. Govind Joti Chavare and others A.I.R.1975 S.C.915 and by the Judicial Committee in Nazir Ahmed v. Emperor A.I.R.1936 P.C.253 also referred to by the Supreme Court in the same judgment.The principle of these decisions seems to be that œthe whole aim and object of the legislature would be plainly defeated if the command to do the thing in a particular manner did not imply a prohibition to do it in any other ( Maxwell on Interpretation of Statutes .,Eleventh Edition at pp.362 -363 ).