SHANKAR SHIDDAPPA KORE Vs. JAYSINGRAO LINGOJIRAO DESAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal arising from a suit filed by the appellant for recovery of possession of S. No. 264/2 of the village of Ankli in Taluka Chikodi. The land was Inam land and originally belonged to defendant No. 1 Jayasingrao, who got it converted into rayatava land on October 27, 1947. He sold it to the plaintiff on March 9, 1949, for Rs. 11,000. It was his case however that the agreement of sale had taken place on December 1, 1948, and the sale was effected in pursuance of the agreement. The contesting defendant was defendant No. 2 and he claimed that the sale deed was void as being in contravention of Section 64 of the Bombay Tenancy Act. Defendant No. 1 admitted that he sold the land to the plaintiff but said that he had received only Rs. 10,500 for it and not Rs. 11,000. He said that he could not hand over possession to the plaintiff because defendant No. 2 was a protected tenant. So far as the question of the agreement was concerned, he supported defendant No. 2's case that the agreement was antedated.

(2.) THE learned trial Judge has held that there was no agreement to sell on December 1, 1948 and the agreement as a matter of fact took place at or about the time when the sale was effected, and the document which is relied upon in support of an agreement of sale on December 1, 1948, was ante -dated. He held that consequently the sale was void under Section 64 of the Bombay Tenancy Act and dismissed the plaintiff's suit.

(3.) NOW , in support of this proposition reliance is placed upon a passage in para. 105 at p. 151 of Crawford's Statutory Construction : - As will be seen hereafter, statutes do not always take effect upon their enactment but the effective date may be postponed either by virtue of their own provisions, or by the terms of a general law or a constitutional requirement upon the subject. In fact, constitutional provisions governing the time for statutes to take effect will be found in at least thrityone states, and most of the others fix the effective date by general states. We do not understand this passage to mean that the operation of a statute is postponed because a portion of it contemplates the doing of something, in this case the appointment of a Tribunal, and that something is not done. What the passage means is that there may be provisions in the statute itself, for example, that it will come into operation on a particular date or such date as may be notified by the Central Government or the Provincial Government, for its coming into operation. When that is the case, the operation of the whole or a portion of the statute will be postponed in virtue of its own provisions. That this is the moaning of the passage is quite clear from the fact that reference is made in the - passage to 'constitutional provisions governing the time for statute to take effect.' As a matter of fact, even in Bombay the Bombay General Clauses Act provides in Section 5 for the coming into operation of a statute upon particular dates, though this of course is subject to the statute not providing to the contrary. It is not possible therefore to accept the contention that Section 64 of the Bombay Tenancy Act did not come into operation or become effective either because there was no appointment of a Tribunal or officer to perform the duties and functions of the Tribunal or because the form in which offers had to be made under Section 64(2) had not been prescribed or because certain supplementary proceedings relating to the procedure of a Tribunal were prescribed by rules made under the Act only on April 27, 1949.