The interpretation of Art.304 of the Constitution requires prior Presidential sanction for the introduction or passing of a Bill or the moving of an amendment.

1. The proceedings impugned in this petition were taken under the provisions of the Travancore-Cochin Food Grains (Distribution, Rationing and Movement) Control Order, 1950. That Order was made on 21.7.1950 in exercise of the powers conferred on the Government by S.3 of the Travancore-Cochin Public Safety Measures Act, 1950 (Act V of 1950), a section which has been held to be ultra vires of the Constitution in 1953 K.L.T. 735 and 1953 K.L.T. 863 for lack of the Presidential sanction prescribed by Art.304, and there can be no doubt that if those decisions are correct this petition has to be allowed.

2. The only question, therefore, that arises for consideration and which was urged before us was regarding the correctness or otherwise of the said decisions. The relevant portion of Art.304 of the Constitution reads as follows:

"Notwithstanding anything in Art.301 or Art.303, the Legislature of a State may by law -

(b) impose such reasonable restrictions on the freedom of trade, commerce or intercourse with or within that State as may be required in the public interest:

Provided that no Bill or amendment for the purpose of Cl.(b) shall be introduced or moved in the Legislature of a State without the previous sanction of the President."

and what was held by this Court in the decisions mentioned above was that S.3 of the Travancore-Cochin Public Safety Measures Act, 1950, was ultra vires of the Constitution because the said enactment did not comply with the stipulation of the proviso to the effect that "no bill or amendment for the purpose of Cl.(b) shall be introduced or moved in the Legislature of a State without the previous sanction of the President".

3. The said Act was passed by the Assembly after the Constitution came into force on 29.3.1950, and after receiving the assent of His Highness the Raj Pramukh was published in the Travancore-Cochin Gazette (Extraordinary) dated 30.3.1950.

4. The argument before us was that the material date for considering the necessity for the Presidential sanction was not 29.3.1950 when the Bill was passed by the Assembly or any date subsequent thereto but the date on which the said Bill was introduced, namely, 13.12.1949. If the material date is a pre-Constitution date like 13.12.1949, it is clear that the State's contention has to be accepted and that the former view cannot be sustained.

5. The answer to the question as to what exactly is the material date will depend on what exactly is meant by the proviso when it says that no "Bill or amendment shall be introduced or moved" without the prior sanction of the President. According to the learned Government Pleader what the proviso really stipulates is that no Bill "shall be introduced" or "amendment moved" in the Legislature of a State without the previous sanction of the President and as the introduction of the Bill in this case was prior to the Constitution and no material amendment was made subsequent thereto no question of a Presidential sanction arises for consideration. He invoked the maxim Reddendo Singula Singulis in support of his contention, a maxim which according to Black's Interpretation of Laws means that "Where a sentence in a statute contains several antecedents and several consequences, they are to be read distributively; that is to say, each phrase or expression is to be referred to its appropriate object". There is also some support for the State's contention in current legislative phraseology, which though it employs both the words "introduced" and "moved" in relation to a Bill, uses only the latter in respect of an amendment.

6. It is admitted that if the interpretation urged by the State is accepted it will be possible to introduce a Bill which required no Presidential sanction, get it amended by a Select Committee in such a way as to make it require the Presidential sanction in case it was originally introduced in the amended form and then pass it into law, and thus escape the necessity for the prior Presidential sancti