TMI Blog1979 (8) TMI 207X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ct of South Kanara was a part of the former State of Madras. As a result of the States Reorganisation Act that District became a part of the State of Mysore, now the State of Karnataka. The Madras Legislature passed an Act called the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 19 of 1951 ( the Madras Act of 1951 ), to provide for the better administration and governance of Hindu Religious and Charitable Institutions and Endowments in the State of Madras Section 76(1) of the Act, as it stood originally, provided that in respect of the services rendered by the Government and their officers, every religious institution shall, from the income derived by it. pay to the Government annually such contribution not exceeding 5 per centum of its income as may be prescribed. This provision and some other provisions of the Act were challenged in the Madras High Court on behalf of the Shirur Mutt and others. The challenge was upheld by the High Court and the appeal filed therefrom by the Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras, was dismissed by this Court in The Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras, v. Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt. Section ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... Commissioner demanded a sum of ₹ 12,724.60 for the Fasli year 1367, ₹ 12,274.60 for the Fasli year 1368, ₹ 11,270.70 for the Fasli year 1369 and ₹ 12,169.20 for the Fasli year 1370. The appellant disputed his liability to pay the contribution on the ground that the Commissioner was not entitled to make any demand for the period subsequent to November 1956, that even assuming that he had the lawful authority to make the demands, the amount demanded was excessive bearing no relationship with the services rendered by the Department and that the expenditure which was incurred on the maintenance of the office and staff of the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner could not wholly or in part be recovered from the appellant by way of contribution under section 76(1) of the Madras Act of 1951. Since the Commissioner did not accept the appellants contention, the appellants filed the Writ Petitions in the Mysore High Court asking that the demand notices be quashed as illegal. Those Writ Petitions were dismissed by the High Court but it has given to the appellants certificates to appeal to this Court under articles 133(1)(a) and (c) of the Constitution. Simul ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... which creates the body corporate. The second contention made on behalf of the appellants is that the demands made by the Commissioner for the payment of fees is illegal because, considering the services rendered to them, the demands are clearly excessive. In other words the argument is that there is no quid pro quo between the services rendered by the State to the appellants and the fees which the Commissioner has called upon them to pay. The affidavit of Shri Annaji Rao in support of Writ Petition 1575 of 1965 filed by the Admar Mutt contains the following averments directed to establishing the absence of quid pro quo. It is stated in paragraphs 14 to 18 of the said affidavit that, (1) in the district of South Kanara, there are about 310 major religious institutions which are dealt with by the establishment of the Commissioner. Out of these, only 30 have an annual income exceeding ₹ 20,000/-. Out of these 30, 17 are Mutts and out of these 17, 9 are situated in Udipi, South Kanara. (2) the 30 major institutions are dealt with by the Deputy Commissioner, South Kanara, Mangalore, under the powers delegated to him by the Commissioner. The remaining 280 Institutions ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... he cost incurred for organising and rendering the services. But matters involving consideration of such a correlationship are not required to be proved by a mathematical formula. What has to be seen is whether there is a fair correspondence between the fee charged and the cost of services rendered to the fee payers as a class. The further and better particulars asked for by the appellants under Order VI, rule 5 of the Civil Procedure Code, would have driven the court, had the particulars been supplied, to a laborious and fruitless inquiry into minute details of the Commissioner s departmental budget. A vivisection of the amounts spent by the Commissioner s establishment at different places for various purposes and the ad-hoc allocation by the court of different amounts to different heads would at best have been speculative. It would have been no more possible for the High Court if the information were before it, than it would be possible for us if the information were before us, to find out what part of the expenses incurred by the Commissioner s establishment at various places and what part of the salary of his staff at those places should be allocated to the functions discharged ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... in its incidence, or because of compulsion in the collection thereof, nor because some of the contributories do not obtain the same degree of service as others may . In Hingir Rampur Coal Co. Ltd. Ors. v. State of Orissa and Ors., the Court while upholding the levy of fee said through Gajendragadkar, J. that the scheme of the Act showed that the cess was levied against the class of persons owning mines in the notified area and it was levied to enable the State Government to render specific services to that class by developing the notified mineral area. In Indian Mica Micanite Industries Ltd. v. State of Bihar Ors., Hedge, J. who spoke for the Court said that before any levy can be upheld as a fee, it must be shown that the levy has reasonable correlationship with the services rendered by the Government to the fee payer but that it will be impossible to expect an exact correlationship. According to the learned Judge, the correlationship expected is one of a general character and not as of arithmetical exactitude. In Secretary, Government of Madras, Home Department and Anr. v. Zenith Lamp Electrical Ltd. where the question was as regards the validity of court fees, Sikri, ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... hat we can positively come to the conclusion that there is no approximation or correspondence between the fees levied on the appellants and the services rendered to the class to which they belong. The second contention therefore fails. The third and last contention made by the learned counsel for the appellants is that the application of the Madras Act of 1951 to one district only of the State of Karnataka offends against the guarantee of equality contained in article 14 of the Constitution which provides that the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. It is urged that as a result of the application of the Madras Act of 1951 to the Mutts and temples in the South Kanara District, they are required to pay fees under the Act which similar institutions situated in other areas of Karnataka do not have to pay. The burden thus imposed on the appellants is said to be an act of hostile discrimination and therefore unconstitutional. In support of this argument counsel has drawn our attention to certain decisions of this Court which we will presently examine but before doing so, we must recall the bac ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... mained in force in a part of the State only with the result that the Jagirdars of only a part of the State could not collect their rents while Jagirdars in other areas like Bikaner, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, and the Matsya Union were under no such disability, since there was no such law in those areas. But when the integration of April and May, 1949 took place, the discrimination exhibited itself not by virtue of anything inherent in the impugned Ordinances but by reason of the fact that Jagirdars of one part of the State were subjected to a disability while those in the other parts remained wholly unaffected. As observed by this Court in its judgment, this was an obvious case of discrimination not supported on the ground that it was based upon a reasonable classification. The discrimination was not open to any exception until the Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950 when by reason of Article 13, all laws in force in the territory of India immediately before the commencement of the Constitution in so far as they were inconsistent with the provisions of Part III became void to the extent of the inconsistency. The High Court as well as this Court found that Section 8-A ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... stly, more than a century had elapsed since the occurrence of events which led to differential treatment being accorded to the area north of Jumna and Ganga; and it is a well-known fact of history that political conditions had changed vastly in India during that period. Secondly, as in Rao Manohar Singhji, (supra) the discrimination was violative of article 14 of the Constitution because there was no longer any nexus between the geographical classification made by section 29 of the Indian Arms Act, 1878 and the object of that provision. After the enactment of the Constitution, article 13 rendered section 29 unconstitutional. There are certain other decisions to which the appellants counsel himself drew our attention fairly and they clinch the issue. We will now refer to them. In Bhaiyalal Shukla v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the appellant was engaged in the business of construction as a contractor under the P.W.D. in the Rewa Circle of the former State of Vindhya Pradesh which had become a part of the State of Madhya Pradesh. He challenged the levy of Sales Tax on building materials supplied by him during the years 1953-59. After the re-organisation of States, Madhya Pradesh had ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... and that these two laws were different in many matters resulting in discrimination which was hit by article 14. The State of Andhra Pradesh, as it came into existence after the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, consists of two areas one of which came to that State from the former Part A State of Madras in 1953 and the other from the former Part B State of Hyderabad in 1956. This Court observed, while repelling the challenge under article 14, that the two areas naturally had different laws and that, assimilation of the laws which were in operation in the two parts of the State and bringing them under one common pattern was bound to take some time. It appears that the Court was informed that the question of having one law for public trusts of religious or charitable nature was under the active consideration of the State Government, for which reason, the Court thought that it was not right to strike down all laws prevailing in the two parts of the State because of certain differences in them arising out of historical reasons. The Court applied to the facts before it the ratio of Bhaiyalal Shukla (supra) and distinguished the decision in Rao Manohar Singhji (supra). In The State of M ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... inequality in taxation between lands situated in South Kanara District and the lands comprised in areas situated in the erstwhile State of Mysore. This challenge was repelled by this Court on the ground that the impugned Acts were in the nature of temporary measures, passed while resettlement and survey was being done in the entire State. This process necessarily took a long time and therefore it could not be said that the State had acted arbitrarily in imposing surcharge on land revenue which was being levied under the existing settlements and Acts. These decisions are authority for the validity of section 76(1) of the Madras Act of 1951 in its application to the South Kanara District of the State of Mysore, now the State of Karnataka. This Court has said time and again that dissimilar treatment does not necessarily offend against the guarantee of equality contained in article 14 of the Constitution. The rider is that there has to be a valid basis for classification and the classification must bear nexus with the object of the impugned provision. In matters arising out of reorganisation of States, continued application of laws of a State to territories, which were within that ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... eorganisation Act made a blanket provision in section 119 continuing the operation of the laws in force in the territories in which they were previously in force notwithstanding the territorial reorganisation into different administrative units until the competent Legislature or authority amended, altered or modified those laws.......... Continuance of the laws of the old region after the reorganisation by section 119 of the States Reorganisation Act was by itself not discriminatory even though it resulted in differential treatment of persons, objects and transactions in the new State, because it was intended to serve a dual purpose-facilitating the early formation of homogeneous units in the larger interest of the Union, and maintaining even while merging its political identity in the new unit, the distinctive character of each region, till uniformity of laws was secured in those branches in which it was expedient after full enquiry to do so. The laws of the regions merged in the new units had therefore to be continued on grounds of necessity and expediency. Bearing in mind these considerations, we are of the view that the Madras Act of 1951, in its application to the South Ka ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ances of the diverse units, before launching upon a process of adaptation of laws so as to make them reasonably uniform, having regard to the special needs of the various regions and the requirements of administrative efficiency. Acts, Rules and Regulations whose constitutional validity is upheld and can be upheld only on the ground that no violation per so of article 14 is involved in the application of different laws to different components of a State, if the area to which unequal laws are applied has become a part of the State as result of the States reorganization, cannot continue to apply to such area indefinitely. An indefinite extension and application of unequal laws for all time to come will militate against their true character as temporary measures taken in order to serve a temporary purpose. Thereby, the very foundation of their constitutionality shall have been destroyed, the foundation being that section 119 of the States Reorganization Act serves the significant purpose of giving reasonable time to the new units to consider the special circumstances obtaining in respect of diverse units. The decision to withdraw the application of unequal laws to equals cannot be de ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... hat would involve the violation of article 14. Facts in regard thereto may have to be explored, if and when occasion arises. In the result the appeals fail and are dismissed but there will be no order as to costs. SHINGHAL J.-I have gone through the judgment of my Lord the Chief Justice. While I concur with him that the appeals fail and should be dismissed, I think there is really no occasion to consider the argument of Mr. Datar that the continued application of the Madras Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1951 (referred to as the Madras Act of 1951 by the Chief Justice) to the South Kanara district, is violative of article 14 of the Constitution. So also, I am unable to subscribe to the view that inequality is so clearly writ large on the face of the impugned statute in its application to the district of South Kanara only that it is perilously near the periphery of unconstitutionality, when the necessary data to justify that conclusion has not been placed on the record and when it has been found that there is no justification for holding that the continued application of that Act to the South Kanara district has become violative of article 14 until now . If ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... in State of Madhya Pradesh v. Bhopal Sugar Industries Ltd. In that case, the former Bhopal State enacted the Bhopal State Agricultural Incometax Act, 1953, which provided for the imposition and levy of tax on agricultural income. The Act was brought into force on July 15, 1953, and was applied to the territory of the whole of the Bhopal State. That State was incorporated into the new State of Madhya Pradesh with effect from November 1, 1956, and by virtue of section 119 of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, the Bhopal State Agricultural Income-tax Act continued to remain in force in that constituent region. Later, the Madhya Pradesh Extension of Laws Act, 1958, extended several Central and State laws to the entire State of Madhya Pradesh, but no change was made in the territorial operation of the Bhopal State Agricultural Income-tax Act in the area to which is originally applied in 1953. There was, however, no law in the rest of the Madhya Pradesh State providing for the levy of tax on agricultural income. The Bhopal Sugar Industries Ltd., which had been incorporated under the Companies Act of the Bhopal State, continued to pay the agricultural income-tax under the Bhopal Act ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... storical reasons may cease to be valid, and it was observed that a purely temporary provision could not be permitted to assume permanency so as to perpetuate a discriminatory treatment without a rational basis to support it after the initial expediency and necessity had disappeared. But even while making this observation on a point relating to the legal aspect of the prayer for redress under article 14 of the Constitution, this Court expressed disagreement with the view of the High Court that as no attempt was made to remove the discrimination in the matter of the levy of agricultural income-tax, it was unlawful because the State had since the enactment of the States Reorganisation Act sufficient time and opportunity to decide whether the continuance of the Bhopal State Agricultural Income-tax Act in the Bhopal region would be consistent with article 14 of the Constitution. In that connection, the Court went on to hold as follows- It would be impossible to lay down any definite time limit within which the State had to make necessary adjustments so as to effectuate the equality clause of the Constitution. That initially there was a valid geographical classification of regions in ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... reason it allowed the State s appeal and remanded the case for retrial after giving an opportunity to the parties to amend the writ petition and the affidavit in reply. I have made a reference to the above unanimous decision of a Constitution Bench of this Court for it has stood the test of time and directly bears on the point on which I have felt it necessary to express myself differently from the view taken by my Lord the Chief Justice. I shall therefore proceed to examine whether the appellants in these cases could be said to have furnished the necessary particulars in their pleadings, to enable the High Court to examine their claim with reference to article 14 of the Constitution, for it is by now well settled that mere efflux of time would not raise the presumption of discrimination or denial of equality before the law. It will be sufficient for me to refer in this connection to the pleadings in writ petition No. 1575 of 1965 and the accompanying affidavit, for the averments in the other petitions are no better. It has thus been stated in paragraph 22, in respect of the Admar Mutt, Udipi, as follows:- 22. The petitioner submits that the States Reorganisation Act cam ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... s by itself not sufficient to attract the application of article 14. The following further observation in that case clearly bears on the point under consideration:- It cannot be said that because a certain number of years have elapsed or that the State has made other laws uniform, the State has acted improperly in continuing an impost which operates upon a class of citizens more harshly than upon others. It may be that if the appellants had furnished the necessary particulars in support of their plea of discrimination, the respondents would have come out with whatever defence was available to them. For instance, the State might perhaps have found it possible to plead that the provision for the collection of the contribution under section 76 of the Madras Act of 1951 was beneficial to the religious and charitable institutions and endowments and was not burdensome in view of the services rendered by the authorities of the State government, and that sub-section (5) of that section was beneficial as it provided that if there was a surplus after meeting all the charges referred to in the preceding sub-section, it could be utilised for helping the poor and needy institutions etc. ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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