IMPORTANT POINT
Proviso to Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act is totally mandatory and bears no exceptions.

ORDER

1. Heard Shri Harish Salve and Shri Shyam Divan, learned senior counsel for the appellants and learned Attorney General of India and Shri Shekhar Naphade, learned learned senior counsel for the respondents.

2. Leave granted.

3. This appeal has been filed against the impugned judgment and order dated 21.01.2008 passed by a Division Bench of the High Court of Bombay whereby the writ petition filed by the appellants herein has been rejected.

4. The facts in brief are that a Notification under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (hereinafter for short ‘the Act’) was issued in respect of the land in question on 29.8.2002. Thereafter a Notification under Section 6 of the Act was issued on 18.6.2003. The said Notification under Section 6 was challenged and the writ petition filed by the appellants was allowed on 20.1.2004 and the Notification under Section 6 of the Act dated 18.06.2003 was quashed. Subsequently a second Notification under Section 6 dated 30.10.2006 was issued by the State Government.

5. The short question that arises for consideration is whether the Notification under Section 6 dated 30.10.2006 is valid. In our opinion, the said Notification was clearly barred by clause (ii) of the proviso to Section 6 of the Act which reads as under :-

“[Provided that no declaration in respect of any particular land covered by a notification under section 4, sub-section (1),-

(i) ........ ......... .......

(ii) published after the commencement of the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Act, 1984, shall be made after the expiry of one year from the date of the publication of the notification;”

It can be seen from the aforesaid proviso to Section 6 that it is couched in negative language. It is well settled that when a Statute is couched in negative language it is ordinarily regarded as peremptory and mandatory in nature.

[See Principles of Statutory Interpretation by Justice G.P. Singh 11th Edition, 2008 pages 390 to 392]. As stated by Crawford “Prohibitive or negative words can rarely, if ever, be directory. And this is so even though the statute provides no penalty for disobedience.” [See Crawford : Statutory Construction P. 523; See also in this connection Haridwar Singh Vs. Begum Sumbra1, AIR 1972 SC 1242 (1247), Lachmi Narain Vs. Union of India2 AIR 1976 SC 714 (726), Mannalal Khetan Vs. Kedarnath Khetan3 AIR 1977 SC 536 etc.]

6. In this connection we may also refer to the Mimansa Rules of Interpretation, which were our traditional principles of interpretation for over 2500 years, but which are unfortunately ignored in our Courts of law today.

7. It is deeply regrettable that in our Courts of law lawyers quote Maxwell and Craies but nobody refers to the Mimansa Principles of Interpretation. Most lawyers would not have even heard of their existence. Today our so-called educated people are largely ignorant about the great intellectual achievements of our ancestors and the intellectual treasury which they have bequeathed us. The Mimansa Principles of Interpretation is part of that great intellectual treasury, but it is distressing to note that apart from the reference to these principles in the judgment of Sir John Edge, the then Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court in Beni Prasad vs. Hardai Bibi4 1892 ILR 14 All 67 (FB), a hundred years ago and in some judgments of one of us (M. Katju, J.) there has been almost no utilization of these principles even in our own country. Most of the Mimansa Principles are rational and scientific and can be utilized in the legal field (see in this connection K.L. Sarkar’s ‘Mimansa Rules of Interpretation’ which is a collection of Tagore Law Lectures delivered in 1905 and which contains the best exposition of these principles).

8. The Mimansa Principles of Interpretation, as laid down by Jaimini in his sutras around 6th Century B.C. and as explained by Sabar, Kumarila Bhatta, Prabhakar, Mandan Mishra, etc, were regularly used by our renowned jurists like Vijnaneshwara (author of Mitakshara)