MANNALAL Vs. SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE present plaintiff-applicant's suit against the G. I. P. Railway has been dismissed by the Judge of the Small Cause Court, Nagpur, on the ground that the requisite notice under Section 140, Indian Railways Act, had not been served in the case. On the day notice was given, the G. I. P. Railway was admittedly not a State railway, it having been taken over by Government some 3 months later. Nevertheless, notice, doubtless under a bona fide misapprehension, was served on the Manager, G. I. P. Railway, Bombay, whereas, under Section 140, Indian Railways Act, in the case of a railway administered by a railway company and not by Government, as was the case on the day in question as regards the G. I. P. Railway, the notice should have been served on the Agent.

(2.) TWO positions have been taken up on behalf of the applicant. First, it is contended that he obviously intended to serve the notice on the highest officer of the railway and that the word. " Manager " was, inreality, a mere mistake of nomenclature, which, in the circumstances, equally implied " Agent. " Secondly, it has 'been suggested, on the strength of certain remarks of Batten, A.J.C., in Deorao v. G.I.P. Ru. Co. [1912] 8 N.L.R. 34, that in any event, the present plaintiff-applicant should have been given an opportunity to prove that notice, which purported to be addressed to the General Manager, in reality, reached the Agent. This plea was put forward in paras. 2 and 4 of the plaintiff's rejoinder, dated 25th July 1925.

(3.) FOR my own part, I must express, with all deference, my disagreement with the learned Additional Judicial Commissioner in this connexion. The provisions of Section 140 are absolute in my opinion and amount to mandatory provision that, before a suit can be filed, such notice must be served on the Manager or on the Agent, and the exact manner of service is more or less specified in detail. It seems to me a very far step from that to stipulate, as has been deemed to be done in the pleadings in the present case, that because the notice was addressed to a person described as the Manager, this notice, even if it came to the notice of the Agent, would prove a sufficient fulfillment of the requirements of Section 140. Railways Act.