DISTRICT LOCAL BOARD, AHMEDABAD Vs. SECRETARY OF STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a judgment of the High Court of Judicature at Bombay reversing a judgment and decree of the First Class Subordinate Judge at Ahmedabad. The appellants are the District Local Board, Ahmedabad, and the Taluka Local Board, North Daskroi, Ahmedabad. They are the plaintiffs in the suit and they ask for a declaration that a certain area of land, 11,384 square yards in extent, situated at Ahmedabad is their property. The defendant, the respondent, is the Secretary of State. The Subordinate Judge found in favour of the appellants and granted the decree craved, holding that the property in the lands in suit, had been transferred by the Government to the Local Fund Committee at Ahmedabad in 1864 and had been thereafter transferred by force of subsequent enactments to the appellants. The High Court held that there was no vesting of the property in the appellants, and further that the respondent was not estopped from denying that the appellants are owners of the land in suit.

(2.) The salient facts are not in dispute, and it is upon the legal inference which arises from them that controversy centres. Before 1864 the area in suit, together with other areas later conveyed to a private party, belonged to the Government. On the disputed area there was a dharamshala or bungalow rest house together with out-houses and buildings, all of which were also the property of the Government. In the first half of the 19 century the Government initiated a plan for placing upon local bodies the responsibility for certain local services. Until the year 1869 the Government seems to have been feeling its way, and what was then done was tentative and provisional and lacked clear formulation. About 1862 or 1863 the Government of the Presidency authorized the establishment of local funds for local objects to be managed by a committee of officials and non-officials with the Collector as president, but these arrangements rested upon an informal basis. In 1869 however for the first time the scheme received formal legislative sanction. The Bombay Act No. 3 of 1869 (S. 2) authorized the Government to create in every district a Local Fund Committee, one half of which were to be non-official persons; the Collector or Sub-Collector was to be ex officio president, and the Committee was to act under the control and general supervision of the Revenue Commissioner. All proceedings of the Committee were to be subject to the review and control and final decision of the Government. By S. 3, the Committee was declared to be competent to hold property, moveable and immovable, to convey the same, and to enter into all necessary contracts for the purpose of the Act. S. 4 placed on the Committee the duty of providing for the requirements of the district with respect to inter alia dharamshalas. By S. 6 the Government was authorized to levy a cess for the purposes of the Act, and by S. 9 the net proceeds of this cess were made available to the district local fund. Under S. 10 the Committee were authorized to administer such other funds as might be placed at their disposal by the Government or by private individuals. The Act contains no provision for vesting any property in the Committee and the subsumption of the Act is that there were no pre- existing bodies to which the new statutory committees could be regarded as successors. In fact however a pre-statutory committee at Ahmedabad had the possession in and management of the bungalow built on the disputed lands and of the disputed lands themselves, and of the lands subsequently sold, which together formed the site and compound of the bungalow.

(3.) The Act of 1869 was replaced by the Bombay Local Boards Act of 1884. It is here necessary to refer only to S. 41, which enacts that all such immovable and other property as was held by or in trust for any committee under the 1869 Act should vest in the District Local Boards and the Taluka Local Boards established by the Act of 1884. The 1884 Act was in turn replaced by the Bombay Local Boards Act 1923 from which the present appellants derive their powers. It is agreed that if the disputed lands were vested in the Local Funds Committee under the 1869 Act, these lands are now vested in the appellants by force of the Acts of 1884 and 1923. The bungalow and compound were in the possession of the statutory committee and afterwards of the Boards set up by the 1884 Act and are now in the possession of the appellants.