SHEIK SHARFUDDIN Vs. RADHA CHARAN DAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a judgment and decree of the High Court at Calcutta, dated the 1st July, 1913. That decree reversed a judgment and decree of the Subordinate Court of Cuttack, dated the 30th March, 1911.

(2.) The suit was one to set aside a sale for arrears of Government revenue. The sale had been conducted under the provisions of the leading statute, Act XI of the year 1859.

(3.) By Section 33 of that statute it is provided that no such sale "shall be annulled by a Court of Justice, except upon the ground of its having been made contrary to the provisions of this Act, and then only on proof that the plaintiff has sustained substantial injury by reason of the irregularity complained of." The defect of procedure which is said not to be merely an irregularity but to amount to an illegality is this: that publication of the notification of sale was necessary in the Urya vernacular Government "Gazette," circulating in the district. By order of the Lieutenant Governor, manifestly made for purposes of public convenience, it was provided that a notification of sales should not appear in that publication. On the hypothesis which is by no means admitted, that non-publication in the "Urya Gazette" was an irregularity, the question for the Board is whether this was an illegality, so as to make the sale "contrary to the provisions" of the Act.