RAM KRISHANADASJI GURU MADHAVDASJI Vs. CHARITY COMMISSIONER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by the erstwhile Mahant and sole Trustee of one temple of village Kanjari Taluka Halol of Panchamahals District registered as a Public Trust under the Bombay Public Trust Act under No. P. T. No. A. 288 - Panchamahals by the Deputy Charity Commissioner Baroda. The learned Joint Charity Commissioner by virtue of powers conferred on him under Section 50A of the Bombay Public Trusts Act has ordered to frame the scheme Ex. 32 on the record for the trust. Being aggrieved by the said order promoting the scheme the present appellant has moved the District Court of Panchamahals at Godhra by filing the Misc. Civil Application No. 7 of 1972 under Section 72 of the Act. The learned District Judge agreed with the Joint Charity Commissioner that a scheme was required to be framed but he made two important changes in the scheme. He made the present appellant as the Managing Trustee of the Board of Trustees and raised his monthly employments (sic.) to Rs. 100 from Rs. 50/. Being aggrieved by the said order of almost confirmation the appellant is before this Court agitating his earlier grounds afresh.

(2.) Mr. Majmudar the learned Advocate appearing for the appellant very strenuously urged that the power under Section 50A of the Act was not exercisable by the Joint Charily Commissioner because there was no material before him on the basis of which he could say reasonably that he had reason to believe that in the interest of the proper management or administration of the Public Trust a scheme should be settled. Mr. Majmudar urged that there was no allegation of mismanagement on the part of the appellant who has spared his own moneys also for that purposes of the trust. He also specifically brought to my notice that even the respondent Nos. 2 to 5 who were appointed as the trustees by the Joint Charity Commissioner also had as per the scheme Ex. 32 supported the appellant even before the learned District Judge and Mr. Majmudfar urged that this was a strong testimonial in favour of the appellant. He also urged that the Joint Charity Commissioner had brought to bear irrelevant circumstances. According to him the late submission of the accounts after getting them audited did not amount to any mismanagement of the properties of the public trust. He also invited my attention to the fact that the village was a very small village that the income of the trust was not in any way considerable that the appellant as a sole trustee-cum-Mahant of the temple could manage the affairs of the trust and that by taking personal interest in the trust properties and by exercising his personal pains he had been personally cultivating the lands of the Public Trust for the benefit of the trust. He therefore urged that objecting this religious head of the temple to the control or supervision of other persons would sap his enthusiasm and the ultimate sufferer would be the trust itself.

(3.) It is to be noted that the powers under Section 50 of the Act are to be exercised by the concerned officer on subjective satisfaction. The phrase reason to believe is the subject-matter of eloborate explanation by the highest Court of the land. A Court hearing the appeal would not replace the opinion of the concerned statutory officer by its own. All it should do is to examine whether there is any material on the basis of which the Joint Charity Commissioner had arrived. Keeping this principle in mind I find that this is in my view a boarder-line case. But the learned Joint Charity Commissioner has listed certain grounds which cannot be said to be non-germane to the question. The Joint Charity Commissioner found that despite the trust have been registered the sole trustee who must be chagrined at the turning down of his claim for private ownership of the temple and the properties had been indifferent to the auditing of accounts and submitting the statements though it was his statutory obligation to do so. The second ground that weighed with the learned authority is that despite there being 110 bighas of land under personal cultivation the trust had been making losses year after year and if the Joint Charity Commissioner held that there is something wrong with the management his conclusion cannot be assessed as unassailable though we may or may not agree with his conclusion on assessment of the material on our own. The third and again a relevant circumstance that had its way on the Joint Charity Commissioner is that in spite of the weak financial position of the trust the sole trustee had been continuing the lavish discharge of the functions of the trust. It need not be emphasised that the cost of expenditure of the trust must always be cut according to cloth. At the hearing before the learned District Judge Mr. Majmudar tells us the appellant had declared that his personal claim of more than Rs. 20 0 from the trust was written off by him. It is a matter of good gesture on his part but the basic fact remains that the expenses for the purpose of the trial were incurred without keeping an eye on the income of the trust. This is certainly not a good arrangement. The decision therefore to frame a scheme is unimpeachable.