TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2006 (3) TMI 812
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....nal jurisdiction by virtue of the proviso to Article 131 of the Constitution of India. 3. The factual dispute relates to the question whether certain villages should form part of Salur or Pottangi taluk. Pottangi taluk appears to be within the territory of the State of Orissa whereas Salur within the territory of Andhra Pradesh. According to the State of Orissa a portion of Salur taluk plan falls within the State of Orissa. This is disputed by the State of Andhra Pradesh. 4. "On 1-12-1920, the Governor General-in-Council with the sanction of the Secretary of State for India directed that with effect from 1-12-1920, a new district called the Agency division comprising of the agency tracts of the Ganjam, Vijagapatam and Godavari distric....
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....ded that the new Province would consist of the area specified in Part I of the First Schedule to the Order. The external land boundaries were also specified in Part II of the Schedule. Paras 3 and 4(1) of the Order provided for: "3. If any question arises with respect to the boundaries as existing at the date of this Order, of any district, agency, taluk, village, estate, forest or other area referred to in the said Schedule or otherwise with respect to the delimitation of the boundary of Orissa, that question shall be referred to the Governor General, whose decision thereon shall be final. 4. (1) The date on which the said provisions are to come into operation shall be the first day of April, nineteen hundred and thirty-s....
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.... as if they formed part of that Province." 8. The present suit was filed by the State of Orissa in 1968 in which it has, inter alia, challenged the 1927 notification and the Gilby Report and has claimed that the 1927 notification has never been given effect to. In short the claim is that the allocation of villages which was made in 1920 to the Pottangi taluk continued and continues till today. However, its grievance is that the State of Andhra Pradesh was wrongfully trespassing into certain villages on the basis of the 1927 notification and on the allegation that the Province of Orissa had accepted the Gilby Report and that the Central Government had accepted the position. 9. In view of this averment the question is whether this Court....
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....ver, submitted that from the entry as against Entry 10 to the First Schedule, it was clear that the territory of Orissa covered not only cases which were "comprised in the Province of Orissa" but also those territories which "were being administered as if they formed part of the Province". It was the State's case that the disputed villages were being administered continuously by Orissa. It was further submitted that the disputes raised in the plaint did not arise out of any treaty, agreement, etc. since it was the State's case that the notification of 1927 was entirely void. It was not, according to the plaint, a document which created any legal right. 11. Having heard the submissions of the parties we are of the view that the pr....
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....n, continues in operation after such commencement, or which provides that the said jurisdiction shall not extend to such a dispute." 15. The word "or" indicates that the succeeding phrase "other similar instrument" is to be read disjunctively. At the same time the word "similar" means that the instrument must be of the same nature as those preceding. An instrument, to fall within this phrase would, in the context, have to be a formal writing by which a right or liability, is or purports to be, created, transferred, limited, extended, extinguished, or recorded. Thus a document acknowledging title in a third person has been held to be an instrument in Biswambhar Singh v. State of Orissa 1954 SCR 842, AIR 1954 SC 139. 16. The words "aris....
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....rnor General-in-Council relating to the disputed villages in 1943. This would be on additional ground to justify our conclusion that the questions raised in the suit arise out of an instrument of a kind specified in the proviso to Article 131. 20. Were we to entertain the suit we would have to determine whether the 1920, 1923 and 1927 notifications and the 1943 agreement effected a reorganisation of the territories of the erstwhile Provinces of Madras and Orissa. If they have, then they continue to bind the successor States under the Constitution. It has been held in State of Punjab v. Balbir Singh (1976) 3 SCC 242, AIR 1977 SC 629: "In our judgment when there is no change of sovereignty and it is merely an adjustment of territo....