NAVINCHANDRA K CHAVDA Vs. RANGE FOREST OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Invoking Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution, the petitioner has prayed to set aside the order dated 8.4.1996 of the Dy. Conservator of Forest, Valsad whereby truck bearing Registration No.GRP 3866 of the petitioner, inter alia, was ordered to be confiscated under the provisions of section 61-A of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, as amended by the Gujarat Acts 15 of 1960 and 19 of 1983 (for short, "the Act"). Admittedly, the Act provides for a remedy for challenging the impugned order in the form of provisions of Sections 61-C and 61-D of the Act. The petitioner has not filed a certified copy of the impugned order, nor was such a copy tendered at the time of hearing, though required in view of certain material parts having been obliterated in the uncertified photocopy of the impugned order.

(2.) The petition is filed by the petitioner in the capacity of the holder of Power of Attorney for the owner of the vehicle in question, even as he himself had filed the earlier petition for the same purpose and in the same capacity and posed as the owner of the vehicle for all purposes. In that petition, being Special Civil Application No.1221/92, under Article 227 of the Constitution, the petitioner had challenged the order of the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Valsad in Criminal Appeal No.7/88 whereby the Court had confirmed the order dated 8.3.1988 of the Dy. Conservator of Forest, confiscating the truck. The petitioner had succeeded in that petition and the impugned order of confiscation as well as the judgment of the learned Addl. Sessions Judge were set aside on 29.09.1992 by this court. That judgment was however carried in appeal by the State, whereupon the Supreme Court, while dismissing the petition for Special Leave to Appeal, observed that if the department desired to initiate action against the registered owner of the vehicle under Section 61-B, it would not be precluded from doing so. Thus, after the aforesaid order dated 24.1.1994 of the Supreme Court, fresh notice dated 11.3.1994 appears to have been issued and again replied by the same holder of the Power of Attorney of the original owner. After considering that reply and elaborately discussing the facts and circumstances, the impugned order dated 8.4.1996 was made.

(3.) The only argument canvassed by the learned Advocate for the petitioner was that, it was already held in the earlier judgment rendered in the case of the holder of the Power of Attorney that the protection conferred upon the agent of the owner of the vehicle applied to the owner as well. When a motor vehicle was used for a regular and lawful transport of the goods, the driver or the person in charge of the vehicle might divert the vehicle for unlawful use for carrying forest-produce without the knowledge or connivance of the owner and the owner could not be said to have foreseen such an unlawful use. If an innocent and unwary owner were attributed knowledge or connivance in carrying of forest produce by the driver, the very provision would be rendered nugatory and perhaps void. Thus, the observations of this Court in the earlier judgment in Navinchandra K Chavda v. Range Forest Officer & Anr. (1993 (1) GLR 948 and in State of Gujarat v. Luhana Prabhudas Vrajlal [1990 (2) GLR 1300] that, if the owner of the vehicle proved to the satisfaction of the officer that it was used in carrying forest-produce without the knowledge or connivance of the owner himself, no order confiscating the vehicle could be made under Section 61-A of the Act, were relied upon to press the petition for the relief of releasing the vehicle.