STATE OF BIHAR Vs. KAMAKSHA PRASAD SHARMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a defendants' First Appeal. Certain undesirable persons of the villages within the jurisdiction of police stations Bihpur, Naugachia and Gopalpur resorted to various acts of lawlessness, and the lives and properties of the law-abiding citizens became unsafe, so much so that all preventive measures taken against many desperate persons who were bent upon creating lawlessness spreading dissatisfaction against the State because ineffective and the functioning of the rule of law became impossible. Accordingly, by a notification dated 17th February, 1954, publishee in the Bihar Gazette dated 3rd March, 1955, under Section 15 (1) of the Polite Act, 1861, (Ext. F) the Governor of Bihar declared that the conduct of the inhabitants of the said villages had rendered it expedient to increase the number of police by the appointment of an additional force consisting of one Deputy Superintendent of Police, one Inspector, one Subedar, 11 Sub-Inspectors, one Jamadar, 11 Havildars and 99 constables to be quartered in the said villages at the cost of the inhabitants thereof, subject to any orders which may be passed under Sub-section (5) of the said section, exempting any person or section of inhabitants from liability to bear any portion of such cost; the proclamation to remain in force for a period of one year with effect from 1st March, 1954, to 28th February, 1955. The cost of the additional police force quartered in the said village, was fixed at Rs. 50,000/- payable in two instalments and was apportioned amongst the different inhabitants. Pursuant to this proclamation, notices were issued to the various inhabitants of those villages, including the plaintiffs, on 25-12-1954, calling upon them to pay the amount assessed against them on 4-1-1955. The present suit was filed on 4-1-1955 by this plaintiffs under Order 1, Rule 8 of the Code of Civil Procedure, in a representative capacity, representing the inhabitants of the said villages, against the State of Bihar and the connected officers for a declaration that Section 15 of the Police Act was ultra vires and unenforceable, that Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure and Section 42 of the Police Act were unconstitutional and violating of their fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution and that the imposition of the tax and its apportionment amongst different inhabitants were illegal, ultra vires, without jurisdiction and null and void. They also prayed for a permanent injunction restraining the defendants from realising the tax so imposed.

(2.) THE defendants resisted the suit. THEy justified the quartering of the additional police force and the assessment of the cost of the force and its apportionment amongst different inhabitants of the said villages, on the ground that the area was in an extremely disturbed condition and the inhabitants were living in terror and were on the mercy of certain undesirable persons. THEy also pleaded that Section 15 of the Police Act was constitutional. THEy alleged further that the suit was not maintainable, as notice under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure was not served.

(3.) THE learned Government Advocate appearing on behalf of the State Candidly conceded that the apportionment of the cost of the additional force amongst the plaintiffs and other inhabitants of the said villages was not legal and the finding of the learned Additional Subordinate Judge on that point was correct. He submitted that he would personally write to the State Government not to realise the cost from the plaintiffs and other inhabitants and to proceed in accordance with law, if the State still desired to realise the tax from the said inhabitants. He pressed only two points, first. That the non-service of the mandatory notice under Section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure was fatal to the suit, and, second, that Section 15 of the Police Act was: perfectly constitutional.