BHANU DUTTA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this application the petitioners asked for appropriate writs directing the respondents to cancel, withdraw, rescind or set aside the finally published electoral rolls for the election of the Corporation of Howrah held on May 21, 1967 and also for a Writ of Prohibition prohibiting the respondents from holding the said election on May 21, 1967.

(2.) THE petitioners are citizens of what previously was known as Bally Municipality. The areas within the Bally Municipality were included in the area of Howrah Municipality and the two areas together have been incorporated in the Municipal Corporation of Howrah, by the Howrah Municipal Act, 1965.

(3.) THE point pressed by Mr. Chakraborty was that the State Government did not issue the notification contemplated by Section 6(1)(b) of the Bengal Municipal Act, 1932. Under this provision 'the State Government may, by notification and by such other means as it may determine, declare its intention', amongst others to withdraw any. Municipality from the operation of the Bengal Municipal Act, 1932. It was submitted that the Bally Municipality was a statutory body under the said Act, and therefore, if it was intended that this statutory body was to be withdrawn from the operation of the Bengal Municipal Act, the State Government should have declared its intention by a notification and by other means. No such notification, it was argued, was published by the State Government, and therefore, the Bally Municipality as a Statutory Body under the said Act could not be deprived of its statutory character. The Statute had prescribed a manner and a mode by which a Municipality, it was argued, could be withdrawn from the operation of the Act; and if it was intended that the Act should no more apply to the Bally Municipality, the requirement of the Act for withdrawal of the Municipality from the operation of the Act should have been complied with. In this case, that was not done, but the areas comprised in the Bally Municipality have been included by the Howrah Municipal Act, 1965, into a Municipal Corporation known as the Municipal Corporation of Howrah. It was argued that no doubt that the legislature had the power to include two different areas into one Municipal Corporation, but if one of the two areas was included within a Municipality, before inclusion of the two different areas into one Municipal Corporation, a notification under Section 6(1)(b) of the Bengal Municipal Act must be published.