GRAM PANCHAYAT CHICHOLI Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) L . The petitioners in this case challenge the validity of the establishment and constitution under the Madhya Pradesh Panchayats Acts, 1962 (hereinafter called the Act) of the Chicholi Gram Sabha as including in its area the villages Chicholi, Sonpur and Nivari according to a notification dated 2nd June 1964 published in the Madhya Pradesh Gazette, Extra -Ordinary, of 4th June 1964. They pray that the aforesaid notification in regard to the constitution of the Chicholi Gram Sabha be quashed and the opponent be restrained from giving effect to it.

(2.) THE material facts are that a Gram Panchayat was first established for Chicholi under the Central Provinces and Berar Panchayats Act, 1946 and was functioning when the Madhya Pradesh Panchayats Act, 1962, came into force. By virtue of section 388 (2) (a) bf the Act this Gram Panchayat became a Gram Panchayat deemed to be duly established and constituted under the 1962 Act and its area came to be deemed as a Gram Sabha area under the Act. Under section 388(3) a Gram Sabha or a Gram Panchayat deemed to be established or constituted under the Act can continue as such until a corresponding Gram Sabha or Gram Panchayat is established or constituted in its place in accordance with the provisions of the Act. That sub -section runs as follows: -

(3.) THERE is no dispute that section 388 (3) of the Act gives to the Government the power to establish and constitute in accordance with the provisions of the Act a Gram Sabha or a Gram Panchayat in place of the deemed body under section 388 (2) and continued under subsection (3). The controversy centers round the question whether in the process of the establishment and constitution of a Sabha or a Panchayat in accordance with the Act in place of the deemed body sections 360 and 361 come into play if the establishment and constitution of the new body involved an alteration in the limits of the deemed body. Section 360 of the Act requires the State Government to notify its intention of attiring the limits of a Gram Sabha or of amalgamating two or more Gram Sabhas or of splitting up a Gram Sabha. Every such notification must define the limits of the local area intended to be included in or excluded from a Gram Sabha area, or of the areas of the Gram Sabhas intended to be amalgamated, or of the area of the Gram Sabha intended to be split up. Then section 361 lays down that any inhabitant of the area or areas affected by a notification under section 360 may submit his objection to the proposal of the Government within the time specified therein and that when sixty days from the date of the publication of the notification under section 360 have expired and the Government has considered the objections, the Government may by a notification after the limits of the Gram Sabha concerned or constitute a new Gram Sabha after amalgamation or soling up an existing Gram Sabha. There two sections, as they are worded, apply even to those Gram Sabhas, which are deemed Gram Sabhas under section 388 (2), if in the establishment or constitution under section 388 (3) of a new Sabha in accordance with the Act its limits rare altered. The words "Gram Sabha" used in the two sections have not been qualified by the use of any word or expression excluding a deemed Gram Sabha from the operation of the two sections.