State regulation of a Bihar religious trust upheld despite outside court scheme and extra-state property

The Bihar Hindu Religious Trusts Act, 1950 was treated as validly applying to a religious trust situated in Bihar, even though the trust had been subject to a scheme framed by a court outside Bihar and held property beyond the State. The statute was held to operate on the trust, its trustees and administrators within Bihar, and to competently exclude such trusts from Section 92 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. Provisions for supervision, control and supersession of committees were regarded as incidental to trust administration, not as an impermissible interference with outside court jurisdiction. The challenge based on extra-territorial operation and jurisdictional conflict therefore failed.

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Issues: Whether the Bihar Hindu Religious Trusts Act, 1950, in its application to a public religious trust situated in Bihar but having a scheme framed by a court outside Bihar, suffered from extra-territorial operation or jurisdictional conflict, and whether the Act could validly exclude the trust from the operation of Section 92 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

Analysis: The Act was held to operate on religious trusts situated in Bihar where the trust itself is within the State and part of its property is also within Bihar. On that footing, the Bihar Legislature was competent to regulate the trust, its trustees and persons administering it, and to provide that Section 92 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, should not apply to such trusts. The provisions dealing with supervision, control and supersession of committees under Sections 28 and 29 were also treated as incidental to the administration of the trust and not as an impermissible interference with the jurisdiction of courts outside Bihar. The doctrine of comity of jurisdictions was held inapplicable because the Act did not take away the jurisdiction of outside courts; it simply placed Bihar trusts outside the scope of Section 92.

Conclusion: The Act did not suffer from extra-territoriality and applied to the Baidyanath temple and its properties; the challenge to the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts therefore failed.

Final Conclusion: The respondent's writ petition was unsustainable, and the statutory scheme under the Bihar Hindu Religious Trusts Act, 1950, was upheld in its application to the temple trust.

Ratio Decidendi: A State law regulating a religious trust situated within the State is valid even if the trust has property outside the State or was earlier governed by a court-made scheme elsewhere, so long as the law operates on the trust within the State and does not amount to an impermissible exercise of extra-territorial legislative power.

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