Judgment

KRISHNA IYER, J.

( 1 ) THIS big bunch of writ petitions shows how litigation has a habit of proliferation in our processual sytem since cases are considered in isolation, not in their comprehensive implications and docket management is an art awaiting its Indian dawn. The facts, being admitted, obviate debate. All these appellants and writ petitioners had paid market fees at the increased rate of 3 per cent (raised from the original 2 per cent) under Haryana Act No. 22 of 1977. Man dealers challenged the levies as unconstitutional, and this Court, ina series of appeals, C. A. No. 1083 of 1977 etc. , Kewal Krishna v. State of Punjab, decided on 4/05/1979: ruled that the excess of 1% over the original rte of 2% was ultra vires. This cast a consequential liability on the market committees to refund the illegal portion. They were not so ordered probably because they could not so ordered probably because they could not straightway be quantified. The petitioners who has, under mistake, paid larger sums which, after the decision of this Court holding the levy illegal, have become refundable, demand a direction to that effect to the market committees concerned. There cannot be any dispute about the obligation or the amounts since the market committees have accounts of collections and are willing to disgorge the excess sums. Indeed,if they file suits within the limittion period, decrees must surely follow. What the period of limitation is and whether Art. 226 will apply are moot as it evident from the High Courts judgment, but we are not called upon to pronounce on either point in the view we take. Where public bodies, under colour of public laws, recover peoples money, later discovered to be erroneous levies, the Dharma of the situation admits of no equivocation. There is no law of limitation, especially for public bodies, on the virtue of returning what was wrongly recovered to whom it belongs. Nor is it palatable to our jurisprudence to turn down the prayer for high prerogative writs, on the negative plea ofalternative remedy since the root principle of law married to justice, is ubi jus ibi remedium. Long ago Dicey wrote:"the law ubi jus ibi remedium, becomes from this point of view something more important than a mere tautological proposition. In its bearing upon constitutional law, it means that the Englishmen whose labours gradually formed the complicated set of laws and institutions which we call the Constitution, fixed their minds far more intently on providing remedies for the enforcement of particular rights or for averting definite wrongs, than upon any delcarations of the Rights of Man or Englishmen. . . The Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the separate States are embodied in written or printed documents, and contain declaration of rights. Bu the statesmen of America have been shown an unrivalled skill inproviding means for giving legal security to hte rights declared by American Constitutions. The rule of law is as marked a feature of the United States as a England. "

( 2 ) ANOTHER point. In our jurisidiction, social justice is a pervasive present; and so, save in special situations it is fair to be guided by the strategy of equity by asking those who claim the service of the judicial process to embrace the basic rule of distributive justice, while moulding the relief, by consenting to restore little sums, taken in little transactions, from little persons, to whom they belong.

( 3 ) WHEN we reminded counsel on both sides of these guidelines of Good Samaritan jurisprudence and desired consensual disposal of these cases, we gratifyingly found welcome echo and we appreciatively record this stance.

( 4 ) THE counsel for the market committees pointed out that although refund of excess collections might be legally due to the traders many of the traders had themselves recovered this excess percentage from the next purchasers. So much so, these tiny titles if they are to return to the original paye