TEJBHANSINGH BHAGWANTSINGH Vs. COLLECTOR, REWA AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner in this case prays for the issue of a writ of certiorari for quashing two orders of the Collector, Rewa, communicated to him in October 1961, by which he was removed from the office of Panch of the Nyaya Panchayat, Mahsamb, and his name was removed from the register of adults maintained under the Vindhya Pradesh Gram Panchayat Ordinance, 1949, and the rules made thereunder.

(2.) THE prescribed authority or the Chief Commissioner may, at any time after calling for an explanation from the person concerned, remove a member of a Panchayat or Panch or Sarpanch of a Nyaya Panchayat -

(3.) In our judgment, the validity of the two orders pas3ed by the Collector, Rewa, cannot be upheld. Under the rules relating to the preparation and publication of the register of adults, once the register is finalised and published under rule 14 the name of any person entered in the register cannot be removed while the register is in operation on the ground that at the time of the making of the entry the person was disqualified under section 5 of the Ordinance. If the name of a disqualified person is borne on the final register, then the question of the removal of his name can be considered and decided only at the time of the next revision of the register in accordance with rules 10 to 14. By rule 15 a provision has been made for the enrolment of a person whose name could not be enrolled at the time of the preparation of the register due to any disqualification existing at that time. Be there is no similar provision for meeting the converse situation of the deletion from the register of the name of a person who, though disqualified at the time of the preparation of the register, was yet enrolled. The proviso to rule 14, on which reliance was placed by the learned Additional Government Advocate, has no applicability here. That proviso says that the 'District Magistrate may, while the register is in operation, order the removal therefrom of the name of any person who is dead or who has become disqualified under section 5 of the Ordinance. " The words "has become disqualified" in proviso to rule 14 mean that the disqualification justifying the removal of the name of a person must have been incurred after the register had been finalised. As was said by Kindersley V.C. in Archer v. Kelly, 20 LJ (C.H.) 911, "the word 'become' in its usual and proper acceptation imports a change of condition, that is the entering into a new state or condition by a change from some former state or condition." For the applicability of the said proviso, it is essential that the new state or the change in the condition due to any disqualification under section 5 of the Ordinance must occur after the register has come into operation. Here admittedly the disqualification on the basis of which the Collector purported to remove the name of the petitioner from the register was one which he had incurred long before the register was prepared and was not any disqualification which he incurred after his name had been entered in the register. It is also very plain from the order made by the Collector removing the name of the petitioner from the register that the order was not one made during the revision of the register in accordance with rules 10 to 14. In the return filed on behalf of the Collector it has been suggested that the first periodical revision of the register became due in 1955 -56 and, therefore, the Collector, Rewa, acting on a report received from the Superintendent of Police, Rewa, issued a notice to the applicant to show cause why his name should not be removed from the register of adults. The rules do not give any such power to the Collector when the register is under revision. The claims and objection that are filed to the provisional register published under rule 10 have to be heard and adjudicated upon under rule 13 by an officer appointed by the District Magistrate on that behalf on the date, time and place appointed for the purpose. The register can be corrected only in accordance with such adjudication of a claim or objection. Bale 13 does not give to the Collector the power which he purported to exercise in the present case. That being so, the Collector's order removing the petitioner's name from the register of adults is altogether without -jurisdiction and illegal.