Judgment

      Patanjali Sastri, C.J.I. - This is a petition under Art. 32 of the Constitution for the enforcement of the petitioner s fundamental rights under Art. 19 (1) (f) and Art. 31 (1) alleged to have been violated by the Central Bank of India Ltd., a company incorporated under the Indian Companies, Act. 1882, and having its registered office at Bombay, (hereinafter referred to as "the Bank").

2. It appears that the petitioner held five shares in the share capital of the Bank which sold those shares to a third party in purported exercise of its right of lien for recovery of a debt due to it from the petitioner, and the transfer was registered in the books of the Bank in the year 1937. The petitioner thereupon instituted a series of proceedings in the High Court at Bombay on its original and appellate jurisdiction challenging the validity of the said sale and transfer. The latest of these proceedings was a suit filed against the Bank in 1951 wherein the plaint was rejected on 2-3-1951 under O. 7, R. 11 (d), Civil P. C as barred by limitation. The petitioner now prays that all the adverse orders made in the previous proceedings be quashed and the said High Court be directed to have "the above suit set down to be heard as undefended and pronounce judgement against the respondent or to make such orders as it thinks fit in relation to the said suit." It may be mentioned here that though the aforesaid order rejecting the petitioner s plaint was appealable, the petitioner did not prefer an appeal on the somewhat extraordinary ground that "the appeal if filed could not be heard by the judges of the said Court as all of them were disqualified from hearing such appeal" either because of their interest in the Bank or because of their prejudice against him.

3. We are of opinion that the petitioner has misconceived his remedy and the petition must fail on a preliminary ground. Neither Art. 19(1) (f) nor Art. 31 (1) on its true construction was intended to prevent wrongful individual acts or to provide protection against merely private conduct. Article 19 deals with the "right to freedom" and by cl. (1) assures to the citizen certain fundamental freedoms including the freedom "to acquire, hold and dispose of property subject to the power of the State to impose restrictions on the exercise of such rights to the extent and on the grounds mentioned in Cls. (2) to (6). The language and structure of Art. 19 and its setting in Part III of the Constitution clearly show that the article was intended to protect those freedoms against State action other than in the legitimate exercise of its power to regulate private rights in the public interest. Violation of rights of property by individuals is not within the purview of the article.

4. The position is no better under Art. 31 (1). The petitioner has urged that Cl. (1) should be construed apart from and independently of the rest of the article and, if so construed, its language is wide enough to cover infringements of rights of property by private individuals. He laid emphasis on the omission of the word "State" in Cl. (1) while it was used in Cl. (2) of the same article as well as in many other articles in part III. Referring to Entry No. 33 of the Union List, Entry No. 36 of the State List and Entry No. 42 of the Concurrent List of the seventh schedule to the Constitution, he also argued that, while these Entries read with Art. 246 empowered Parliament and the State Legislatures to make laws regarding acquisition or reacquisitioning of property for the purposes of the Union or the State as the case may be, no power was conferred to make laws regarding "deprivation of property" by the State so that the "deprivation contemplated in Cl. (1) could only be deprivation by individuals. Sub-section (1) of S. 299, Government of India Act, 1936, corresponding to Cl. (1) of Art. 31 was, it was pointed out omitted in the draft Art. 19 (later numbered as Art. 31) which retained in a modified form only the p