VALLI AMMAL Vs. CORPORATION OF MADRAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff is the owner of house and premises No. 36 Singanna Chetti Street within the Municipality of Madras. She applied for and obtained permission, from the officer competent to grant the same, to carry out certain repairs to her house in April 1909. The President of the Corporation was of opinion that, taking advantage of this permission granted to her, she had made other considerable alterations and additions to her house and ground without his sanction; and he accordingly made a provisional order under Section 287 Clause (1) of the Madras City Municipal Act III of 1904 requiring her to remove those alleged additions. That provisional order was afterwards confirmed by him under Section 287 Clause (2) of the Act. The plaintiff appealed against it to the Standing Committee who declined to interfere. Her case is that there were no additions or alterations as stated by the President but that the four rooms which have been ordered to be demolished had been in existence for more than 20 years and that therefore neither the President nor the Corporation was entitled to ask her to demolish the same on the ground alleged. She therefore prays for an injunction to restrain the defendant (the Corporation of Madras) from demolishing these four rooms. It is necessary at this stage to notice only the following plea advanced in paragraph (3) of the written statement:--"The order of the Standing Committee referred to in paragraph 4 of the plaint filed herein having become final under Section 287 (3) of the Act the suit is not maintainable against the defendant Corporation at all; and the plaintiff has misconceived her remedy if any.

(2.) The City Civil Court Judge held that the plaintiff was not barred from bringing the suit on the ground that the Standing Committee had confirmed the order of the President but he held that the suit for an injunction in his court is not the proper remedy and that the plaintiff should apply to the High Court by way of mandamus and for this position he relied upon the decision in Bolaram Chowdhry v. The Corporation of Calcutta (1909) I.L.R. 36 C. 671. This is an appeal from his judgment.

(3.) The case referred to, does not support the proposition that the proper remedy is by way of mandamus. The question for decision in that case was not whether an injunction or a mandamus was the proper remedy, nor did the judge decide that a suit for an injunction will not lie to restrain the Corporation from committing an act which is improper or illegal.