EMPEROR Vs. RANCHHODLAL HIRABHAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE question referred to this full bench is whether Section 7 of Act XXIV of 1946 makes punishable the contravention of orders deemed to be orders made under the Act by virtue of the provisions of Section 17 (2) of the Act. As it is well-known, the war emergency came to an end on April 1, 1946, and six months thereafter on September 30, 1946, the Defence of India Act and the rules made thereunder ceased to be operative, and all orders which were made under those rules would also have come to an end but for the Ordinance which was promulgated on September 25, 1946. Under that Ordinance power was given to the Central Government to issue orders in order to control the production, supply and distribution, etc. of essential commodities, and under Section 5 the orders which were made under the rules of the Defence of India Act were continued, and Section 8 of the Ordinance made penal the contravention of any order made or deemed to be made under Section 3 of that Ordinance. THErefore, it is dear that the Ordinance provided not only for the issuing of orders in future but saved orders already made and made penal the contravention of orders to be made ana orders already made and continued by Section 5 of the Ordinance.

(2.) THEN we come to the Act which calls for an interpretation at our hands, and that is Act XXIV of 1946. Section 3 is the enabling section which gives power to the Central Government to issue orders for the purpose of controlling production, supply, distribution, etc. of essential commodities just as Section 3 of the Ordinance had given a similar power to the Government. Section 17 of the Act is the re-pealing and saving section. That section repeals Ordinance XVIII of 1946. Having repealed it, it proceeds to save the orders already made or deemed to be made under that Ordinance, and Sub-clause (2) of that section says this: Any order made or deemed to be made under the said Ordinance and in force immediately before the commencement of this Act shall continue in force and be deemed to be an order made under this Act. The penal section is Section 7 which provides: If any person contravenes any order made under section 3, he shall be punishable in the manner provided in that section.

(3.) IT is perfectly true that in construing a statute the Court is entitled to look at the history of prior legislation, especially look at statutes which are in pari materia and which deal with the same subject. IT is also true that ordinarily the Court would give some effect to a change in language effected by the Legislature, because the normal canon of construction is that the Legislature does not do any thing without having some object for doing it, and therefore when the Legislature deliberately changes the language used in two statutes dealing with the same subject-matter, ordinarily some effect is to be given to the change in language. But it is an equally clear canon of construction that if it is found that the language used in two statutes is different and that the language used in the earlier statute was unnecessary or superfluous and the Legislature deletes the unnecessary and superfluous part from the statute, no inference or no presumption can be drawn from the change of language. In our opinion, when an order which has already been made is treated by the statute to be the same as the order to be made under the enabling section of the statute, then it is unnecessary and superfluous to maintain the distinction in the rest of the statute between an order made and an order deemed to be made. The whole object of the Legislature in treating an order which has not been made under that statute but which has already been in existence as of the same efficacy as an order made under the statute is to put both these orders on exactly the same footing and treat them alike. IT is undoubtedly by a legal fiction that this is done. But once that legal fiction is introduced, no further reason is left why a distinction" or a difference in language should be maintained in different sections of the statute. If one turns to the Ordinance XVIII of 1946, one finds that this dual language, viz. "orders made" and "orders deemed to be made" is maintained in several sections of that Ordinance, and it is clear that as a matter of drafting when the Legislature passed Act XXIV of 1946, they thought it better to omit the dual language and do away with the difference between the orders made and orders deemed to be made, and having enacted Section 17, in the rest of the statute it has only referred to orders made and not orders deemed to be made.