Refund bar for passed-on market fee upheld where licensee retained the collected amount and bore the proof burden.

Section 23-A of the Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets Act was analysed as a measure aimed at preventing refund where a licensee had already recovered market fee from the next purchaser. It did not authorise a fresh or retrospective validation of the higher levy; instead, it operated only to bar retention-based refund claims and avoid unjust enrichment. The provision was also treated as valid in placing the burden on the licensee to prove that the fee had not been passed on, since that fact lay specially within the licensee's knowledge. The related bar on refund suits, decrees, and their enforcement was described as an ancillary consequence of the curtailed refund right.

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Issues: (i) Whether Section 23-A of the Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets Act validly permitted Market Committees to retain excess market fee collected from a licensee where the burden had been passed on to the next purchaser, without amounting to an impermissible validation of the higher levy struck down earlier; (ii) whether the provision validly placed the burden on the licensee to prove that the fee had not been passed on, and barred refund suits, decrees, and their enforcement.

Issue (i): Whether Section 23-A of the Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets Act validly permitted Market Committees to retain excess market fee collected from a licensee where the burden had been passed on to the next purchaser, without amounting to an impermissible validation of the higher levy struck down earlier?

Analysis: The statutory scheme showed that licensees were middlemen who could realise market fee from the next purchaser and deposit it with the Committee. Section 23-A did not authorise any fresh levy at the enhanced rate or retrospectively validate collections beyond the judicially upheld limit. Its object was limited to preventing refund to a licensee who had already recovered the amount from purchasers, thereby avoiding unjust enrichment. The provision operated only on the question of entitlement to retain the collected amount and not on the legality of the levy itself.

Conclusion: The provision was held to be valid and was not struck down as a validating enactment of the higher fee; the challenge on this ground failed.

Issue (ii): Whether the provision validly placed the burden on the licensee to prove that the fee had not been passed on, and barred refund suits, decrees, and their enforcement?

Analysis: Since the licensee alone would know whether the fee had been recovered from the next purchaser and would have the relevant records, placing the onus on the licensee accorded with settled principles of evidence, including the rule that facts especially within a person's knowledge must be proved by that person. Once the substantive right to refund was validly curtailed in cases where the burden had been passed on, the ancillary bar against suits, decrees, and their enforcement did not amount to an unconstitutional intrusion into the judicial field.

Conclusion: The burden of proof provision and the bar on refund remedies were upheld as valid.

Final Conclusion: Section 23-A and the amending Act were upheld as constitutionally valid, but the individual matters were required to be placed before a single Bench for decision on their merits in light of that answer.

Ratio Decidendi: The legislature may validly prevent refund of an unlawfully collected fee where the payer has passed the burden to another, and may place the evidentiary burden on the person possessing special knowledge of that fact.

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