SOUTH INDIAN RAILWAY Vs. MUNICIPAL COUNCIL TRICHINOPOLY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff, the South Indian Railway Company, Ltd., is the appellant before us. The suit was brought for recovery back of the total of the sums paid by the Railway Company to the Municipal Council of Trichinopoly between March 1912 and November 1914, for what are called private scavenging services performed by the Municipality for the Railway Company. I find that they are called scavenging fees in the relevant notices, reports and bills (see for example Exhibit J.).

(2.) The Railway Company owns stations and offices at the Junction and Fort of Trichinopoly. There are several latrines and urinals in these places, and the washings and the nightsoil are collected by the railway authorities through the railway coolies into certain receptacles and a repository and into cisterns, the urinals being drained into cisterns. The Municipality owns carts and bulls, and employs drivers to drive the carts to the Municipal nightsoil depot which is situated at a distance of 5 1/2 or 6 miles from the junction station. The so-called scavenging fees recovered from the Company seem to be the hire charged for the supply of the nightsoil carts and urinal carts with bulls and drivers. Three nightsoil carts and four urinal carts seem to have been usually supplied in the year 1913, and the hire charged for the three nightsoil carts is Rs. 55 a month, and for the four urinal carts Rs. 62 a month. (See Exhibit A2.) (The requirements in previous and subsequent years have of course varied from what they were in 1913.) The second paragraph of Exhibit A2 says: The nature of the service rendered is carting away the nightsoil and urine collected by the Railway scavengers and kept in readiness in receptacles for removal.

(3.) After going through the records carefully I am satisfied that the claim of the Municipality relates to the cost of transport to the Municipal depot from just outside the railway premises, and that the removal of the nightsoil and urine in the receptacles and cisterns from within the railway compounds to just outside the compounds was treated as a negligible preliminary to the main work of transport to the depot. It may be that the hired carts proceed some distance into the Railway premises to receive the offensive matter and then go out to the municipal road outside the premises and are then driven off to the Municipal depot at a distance of six miles; but the transport from inside the railway premises to just outside those premises, assuming that it is done in the municipal carts, does not seem to have been considered as a separate service chargeable by itself, any more than a cart driver charges for removing things from the verandah of a bungalow to the gate separately from the charge for conveyance to the Railway station. It is the employment of the carts, bulls and drivers in transporting the stuff to a distance of six miles which is the service which has been charged for and objected to in this case.