EMPEROR Vs. BUDHABHAI SAKARBHAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the Government of Bombay against an order of the Stipendiary First Class Magistrate, Ahmedabad, acquitting the accused Budhabhai Sakarbhai. The accused had been prosecuted by the Chief Officer of the Ahmedabad Municipality under Section 15 (1) (c) (ii) of the Bombay Town Planning Act (Bom. 1 of 1915) for having put up a corrugated iron screen on the north-western side of his plot No. 54814 in the Ellis Bridge Town Planning scheme area without the previous permission of the Municipality

(2.) SECTION 15, Sub-section (1), Clause (a), of the Bombay Town Planning Act, provides that when a local authority has published a declaration of intention to make a scheme, no person shall within the area included in the scheme erect or proceed with any building or work unless he has applied for and obtained the necessary permission from the local authority.

(3.) THE main contention urged on behalf of the accused, and which prevailed with the learned Magistrate, was that the screen of corrugated iron, which the accused had put up, was not a building within the meaning of Section 15 (1) (a) of the Bombay Town Planning Act. THE Town Planning Act does not define what a building is. In the absence of any definition of the word in the Act itself, the Court would be entitled to look at the definition of that word in analogous Acts. Section 3, Sub-section (2), of the Bombay Municipal Boroughs Act (Bom. XVIII of 1925), says that a building for the purposes of that Act shall include any hut, shed or other enclosure, whether used as a human dwelling or for any other purpose, and shall also include walls, verandahs, fixed platforms, plinths, door-steps and the like. This is the definition of the word 'building' for the purposes of Section 123 of that Act, which prohibits the construction of or alteration or addition to a building or part of a building without the previous permission of the Municipal authorities. I see no reason why that definition should not be applied for the interpretation of Section 15 of the Bombay Town Planning Act. According to that definition a 'wall' would be a building for the purposes of Section 15 (1) of the Bombay Town Planning Act. Even according to the ordinary dictionary meaning of the word, a wall would be a building. In the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary a building is defined as ' That which is built; a structure, edifice'.