AHMEDABAD MANUFACTURING AND CALICO PRINTING CO LTD Vs. MUNICIPAL CORPORATION OF THE CITY OF AHMEDABAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a most unfortunate controversy between the petitioner company and the Municipal Corporation of the City of Ahmedabad. It is really a matter of regret that the matter should have come to Court and the matter should have been contested by both the petitioner company and the Municipality. It appears that the petitioner company submitted plans for construction of nine buildings. The buildings were sheds near Weigh Bridge, extension to Drawing in Department, R. C. C. Slab and Bobbin Room, Loft over Grey and Sin-gening Beam Store attached to Winding and Warping, Dining Shed attached to 'b' Spinning, Cloth Godown Extension, Humidity Ducts and Fan Room for Spinning, and Cheese Dyeing Department Extension, and various requisitions which were made by the Ahmedabad Municipality were complied with. But notwithstanding the compliance by the petitioners of these requisitions, the Municipality refused sanction to the petitioners to construct these buildings and the petitioners have come to this Court for a mandamus upon the Municipal Corporation and the Municipal Commissioner of the City of Ahmedabad to give the sanction to the plans they have submitted.

(2.) IN the first place, a preliminary objection is taken by the Advocate-General on behalf of the respondents that there has been considerable delay in filing this petition. It is pointed out that with regard to the 9th structure the permission wag refused by the Municipality on 5-3-1954, with regard to structures 1 to 6 the permission was refused on 20-9-1954. With regard to the 7th structure the permission was refused on 27-9-1954, and with regard to the 8th structure the permission was refused on 29-11-1954, and the present petition was only filed on 15-4-1955, and the Advocate-General says that therefore there has been considerable delay which ought to disentitle the petitioners to any relief from this Court. Now although the permission was refused by the Municipal Corporation, on 16-2-1955 the petitioners very rightly called upon the Municipal Corporation to tell them if they wanted any drainage to be constructed with regard to these buildings which they proposed to construct, and as we shall presently point out, the real point in this controversy between the Municipality and the petitioners is the question of erecting drainage. The answer to this letter was given by the Municipality on 12-3-1955 and the answer was that no final decision had been arrived at in respect of the petitioners' application and the matter was under consideration, and they were further told that until the matter was finally disposed of no work should be carried out in their mill without permission. It is impossible to expect the petitioners to have come to Court even after receipt of this letter because it would have been legitimate on the part of the Ahmedabad Municipality to call upon the petitioners to carry out certain drainage work under Section 171, Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, which we shall presently consider, and till they finally heard from the Municipality as to the reason why their application for constructing these buildings was refused they could not come to this Court, and this only happened on 30-3-1955 when the Municipality finally turned down their application and gave them reasons which depended upon their construction of Section 171 of the Act. As their construction did not conform to the construction put upon the section by the petitioners, the petitioners came to this Court on 15-4-1955. In our opinion, therefore, there is no delay in this case which would disentitle the petitioners from maintaining this petition.

(3.) ON the correspondence it is clear that the respondents never at any time suggested that any of these nine buildings which the petitioners proposed to construct required any drainage. Indeed it has been the case of the petitioners throughout that these buildings did not require any drainage because there was no likelihood of any water being there which required to be drained. The attitude taken up by the respondents in the correspondence was that the petitioners were bound to provide proper drainage not for these buildings but for premises appurtenant to these buildings. This demand of the Municipality came to be made under the following circumstances. It seems that the petitioners are in the very fortunate position -- a position which they seem to fully exploit -- of being on the river bank and they discharge their trade waste or trade affluent' as it is called into the river. It also appears from what Mr. Kolah told us on behalf of the petitioners that this was being done by the permission of the Municipality, but the Municipality has now realised that by discharging the trade waste into the river, the river is being fouled or polluted, and we have before us affidavits which go to show that the water of the Sabarmati river is drunk not only by cattle but also by human beings, and according to the Municipality the trade waste discharged into this river contains considerable amount of poison, and therefore a requisition seems to have been made by the respondents that the petitioners should discharge the trade waste into the Municipal drain, but not the trade waste as it emerged from the Mills but after it was purified so that the Municipal drains would not corrode by reason of the trade waste in its original conditions being discharged into the municipal drains. This controversy was going on and the petitioners in the meanwhile made their application for the construction of these new buildings. The respondents from the best of motives wanted, as it were, to put the screw upon the petitioners to carry out their requisition with regard to the discharge of the trade waste and instead of, in our opinion, following the proper, legal procedure they refused to give the petitioners permission to build their new buildings on the ground that they had not carried out the Municipal requisition with regard to the discharge of trade waste in other buildings which had no connection whatever with the buildings which the petitioners proposed to construct. The whole question before us is this. Did the Municipal Commissioner or the Municipal Corporation impose a proper condition or a legal condition upon the petitioners in refusing sanction to construct these buildings? The only condition which has been imposed upon the petitioners by the respondents is that they must provide an effectual drainage of the Mill premises appurtenant to the various buildings which they are proposing to construct, and the solution of that question depends upon the provisions of the Act and the rules framed under the Act.