KESHAV DHONDI SINDE Vs. JAIRAM GANGARAM PAWAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This rule was issued calling upon the opponent to show cause, why an order passed by Mr. Wadia, Assistant Collector of Sholapur, purporting to revise the decree of a Mamlatdar s Court, should not be set aside, as being in the first place a nullity, or failing that, as having been made without jurisdiction or in excess of the jurisdiction vested in that Officer.

(2.) The principal point to which our attention has been invited is whether an Assistant Collector, merely in virtue of being placed in revenue charge of certain portions of a District, is thereby empowered to exercise all the powers conferred upon the Collector of the District by Section 23 of the Mamlatdars Courts Act (Bombay Act II of 1906).

(3.) On a first view, it would appear that an Assistant Collector could not be so authorized; but in opening his case Mr. Branson very candidly, and very rightly, I think, drew our attention, to Section 10 of the Land Revenue Code; and after having given that section our very best and most careful attention, with special reference to the arguments which Mr. Branson has used against its applicability here, we feel unable to escape from the force of the direct language used. If language is ever to mean anything, when it is perfectly plain and unambiguous, the language of this section, we think, must be taken in its natural sense. That section enacts that after certain conditions precedent have been fulfilled, an Assistant Collector thus placed in charge of portions of a District is empowered to exercise all the powers conferred upon the Collector by this Act or any other law at the time being in force within the local limits of that portion of the District, of which he has been placed in charge. It has been very strenuously contended that the words "or any other law at the time being in force" having regard to the general structure of the section and to its place in the Land Revenue Code, ought to be restricted to laws or Acts ejusdem generis: but we think that that would be stretching interpretation too far; and had we had any doubt of what Government intended when this Land Revenue Code was passed, (a Resolution, which of course is no binding authority upon us, but serves to throw useful light upon this question, cited in a footnote to Section 10 in Sathe s Edition of the Land Revenue Code), goes far to dispel that doubt.