1918 (3) TMI 2

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....o be due under the agreement and brought this action to safeguard their rights under it. The agreement is one made with the Collector of Madras under the provisions of the former Income Tax Act (II of 1886) Section 31, which enables persons, instead of being reassessed every year, to arrange with the Collector for a definite sum to be assessed for a fixed period and in this case the period agreed upon was five years from the 1st April 1915. The plaintiffs originally sued the Secretary of State for India. At one time the point was taken on behalf of the Government that the proper person to be sued was not the Secretary of State but the Collector of Madras but, on a suggestion nude at the time of the settling of issues, that difficulty, which....

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....t on the original side trying revenue suits had disappeared, because one of the learned Judges, Mr. Justice Kernan, held that the prohibition contained in the section of Act 39 and 40 Geo. III C. 79, otherwise known as the Government of India Act, l800, was repealed by 53 Geo. III, Ch. 155, Sections 99 and 100, and the other learned Judges apparently held that the prohibition contained in 39 and 40 Geo. III C. 79 was by necessary implication repealed by the Charter Act and the Letters Patent of this Court. What Mr. Grant says is as I follow it, this : here in 1874 at the date of the judgment of that Bench, there was in existence the Act 39 and 40 Geo. III Ch. 79, but the learned Judges still held that the effect of later legislation had bee....

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.... Mr. Grant took the further point that the fetter on my jurisdiction was only with regard to "acts ordered or done in the collection of the revenue according to the usage and practice of the country or the law for the time being in force," and he says, "if you go into the facts, on the merits you will find that my contention is well founded, that this was an illegal repudiation of the agreement." That contention, I think, was disposed of as long ago as 1848 in a judgment of their Lordships of the Privy Council in the case of Spooner v. Juddow 1848 4 M.I.A. 353. In that case the Court put a construction on a protective statute of this kind which, so far as I know, has never been departed from, and it is put in much clearer words than I can p....