BEPIN BEHARY SEN Vs. CHAIRMAN OF SANTIPUR MUNICIPALITY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Municipality of Santipur seems to have been established in the district of Nadia in 1865 with a body of 25 Commissioners--See the Bengal Code, Vol. III at p. 493. It appears in the second schedule to the Bengal Municipal Act of 1884 as being a Municipality in which the appointment of the chairman rests with the Local Government and that of two-thirds of the Commissioners with the rate payers. By paragraph 8 of a Resolution, dated the 29 August 1903, and issued under Section 65 of the Act, the Local Government suspended the Commissioners from office for a period of one year, to expire on the 2 September, 1904. By this order the then Commissioners vacated their offices as such by virtue of Clause (a) of Section 66 of the Act; and, by a further order passed under Clause (b) of the same section, the Sub-Divisional Officer of Ranaghat was appointed as the person by whom "all the powers and duties of the Commissioners during the period of supersession should be exercised and performed."

(2.) During this period, the Sub-Divisional officer, proceeding under Section 9(e), recommended that the number of the Commissioners should be reduced from 25 to 9, and this recommendation was accepted by the Local Government. At the same time a Resolution dated the 31 August, 1904, was issued directing, under the last paragraph of Section 66, that the Municipality should be entered in both the first and the second schedules to the Act. As already stated, the Santipur Municipality was already in the second schedule, and to that extent the order just quoted may be said to have been supererogatory; but, be that as it may, the result was that the Municipality became one in which all the Commissioners, as well as the chairman, had to be appointed by the Local Government. It appears that the corporation was then reestablished with a body of only nine Commissioners, and thereafter the body so reconstituted imposed certain now rates, to which the appellant, inter alia, was assessed to the extent of some three rupees. He at first refused to pay; but, under pressure of the issue of a distress warrant, did eventually pay and bring a suit for the recovery of the amount levied and damages. The suit was tried by the Munsiff of Ranaghat in the exercise of his ordinary jurisdiction and was dismissed; an appeal was then preferred to the Subordinate Judge of Nadia and also dismissed; and a second appeal has now been laid before this Court.

(3.) The preliminary objection has been taken that, as the suit was valued at less than Rs. 500 and is "of the nature cognizable in a Court of Small Causes," no second appeal lies under Section 586 of the Civil P. C.. It seems to me, however, that the suit falls under Clause (35)(j) of the second schedule to the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act of 1887, as being a suit for compensation for illegal distress" and so excepted from the cognizance of a Small Cause Court. The preliminary objection, therefore, fails.