DHURJATI PROSAD DAS Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner does not go as far as to question the vires of Section 147 of the Railways Act, 1989; but urges that in the procedure thereunder not recognising due process, the provision cannot be resorted to for the purpose of removing any person from a railway property if such person has lawfully entered thereupon and has merely refused to leave therefrom upon the expiry of the licence. The petitioner contends that in Section 147 of the Act not expressly providing for any force to be used against a lawful entrant into a railway property who refuses to leave after the expiry of the licence, the railways have to resort to the general law of the land or any special law, if applicable, to have the licencee evicted from the railway premises. Since a purely legal issue has been raised by the petitioner, the facts are not of much relevance except to establish that the legal issue arises on the facts; and, may be, for the purpose of assessing costs.

(2.) The petitioner or the petitioner's predecessors-in-interest have been operating as fruit vendors for so long at the Howrah station main complex that the petitioner has been embarrassed to indicate the exact date of the original licence in the petition. The business appears to have been in the family since 1925 and the petitioner's father made merry at the railways' expense following a demand for increased licence fees with retrospective effect, by challenging the demand and warding off dispossession by obtaining an interim order on a petition carried to this court under Article 226 of the Constitution in the year 1983. The writ petition, CO No. 10740(W) of 1983, was dismissed for default and the petitioner therein dispossessed from the railway property; but only temporarily. An application for restoration of the writ petition was allowed by recalling the order of dismissal for default. Much later, such petition was disposed of by an order of February 27, 2003 which interpreted the order recalling the order of dismissal for default to imply that the protection against dispossession that the petitioner enjoyed revived upon the writ petition being restored and the protection had to be regarded as being kept in abeyance during the period when the writ petition remained dismissed for default. The order allowing the writ petition of the year 1983 set aside the retrospective claim of enhanced licence fees and permitted the petitioner to pay the enhanced licence fees from the date of the letter of enhancement in instalments over a period of five years. The order also provided for the restoration of the petitioner's possession and even permitted the petitioner to make a representation for reduction of the enhanced licence fees.

(3.) The petitioner claims to have paid the arrears in accordance with the order. The railways preferred an appeal from the order dated February 27, 2003 but did not take any steps to have it heard till it was taken up on July 11, 2013.