Judgment

BOSE J. : The High Court of Patna granted the Petitioner before it leave to appeal under Article 132 (1) of the Constitution on the ground that a substantial question of law relating to the interpretation of the Constitution was involved.

2. The appellant is the Secretary of the Rate Payers Association at Patna. He and the other members of his Association reside in an area which was originally outside the municipal limits of Patna and was not liable to municipal and cognate taxation. On 18-4-1951 this area was brought within municipal limits and was subjected to municipal taxation. This was accomplished by a Notification of that date. By reason of this the appellant and the others whom he represents were called upon to pay taxes for the period 1-4-1951 to 31-3-1952. The Notifications were issued under Section 3 (1) (f) and 5 of the Patna Administration Act of 1915 (Bihar and Orissa Act I of 1915), the appellant claims that the Notifications are delegated legislation and so are bad and prays that sections 3(1) (f) and 5 of the Act which permitted this delegation be condemned as ultra vires .

3. In order to appreciate the points raised it will be necessary to go back to the year 1911 when the province of Bihar and Orissa was formed. It will also be necessary to bear in mind that we have to deal with three separate sections in the area which is now called Patna. In order to avoid confusion we will call them Patna City, Patna Administration and Patna Village respectively. It must be understood that this is a purely arbitrary nomenclature adopted by us for the purposes of this judgment and that they are neither so called nor so recognised anywhere else. Their boundaries has not been static but it will be necessary to keep them notionally distinct.

4. When the new Province was formed in 1911 the Bengal Municipal Act of 1884 applied to the whole of it. At that time one of the three portions of Patna with which we are concerned (namely, the portion we have called Patna City) was under a Municipality (the Patna City Municipality) created under the Bengal Act. This Municipality continued to function in the Patna city area after the creation of the new Province. The other two sections were not born as distinct entities till later and the areas which they now cover were not under any municipal or cognate jurisdiction.

5. The new Province required a new capital and Patna was chosen for the purpose. Quite naturally the City expanded and , following the general pattern in India, a new area grew up(distinct from the old City) which housed the head-quarter of the new Government. Before long, it was though expedient to bring this area under municipality of its own rather than place it under the old city municipality.

Accordingly, the legislature of the new State passed the Patna Administration Act of 1915 (Bihar and Orissa Act I of 1915) to enable this to be done. This Act came into force on 5-1-1916. The petitioner impugns Sections 3(1) (f) and 5 of the Act and the Notifications made under it on the ground that they permit delegated legislation which has hurt him and wrongly rendered him liable to municipal taxation.

6. Broadly speaking, the Act empowered the Local Government to create a new municipality (later called the Patna Administration Committee) for this new area which, in our arbitrary classification we have called Patna Administration. The Act called this new area "Patna" and defined its boundaries in the Schedule to the Act. This area did not include either the section which we have called Patna City or the one we have dubbed Patna village.

7. Now the legislature of this new State did not draw up a new Municipal Act nor did it apply the existing Bengal Municipal Act of 1884, which was at that time in force in the Province, to this new area which the Act of 1915 called "Patna" and which we have called Patna Administration. Instead, by Section 3 (1) (f) it empowered the Local Government to

"extend to Patna the provisions of any sec