Lacunna crept in the new Act.

Mr. M.K. Nambiar appearing for the petitioner is seeking to revise the order of the learned District Judge of South Kanara whereby he declared that the pending proceedings in O.P. No. 26 of 1951 stood automatically transferred to the appropriate Court or authority and that they should be deemed to be pending before that Court or authority by virtue of section 103(j) and (k) of Act XIX of 1951, the new Hindu Religious Endowments Act.

O.P. No. 26 of 1951, was originally filed under section 84(2) of the Hindu: Religious Endowments Act II of 1927, praying that the District Court might set aside the order of the Hindu Religious Endowments Board that the Vishnoorthi Temple of Cheemani village, Kasargod taluk, was a private temple within the meaning of the Hindu Religious Endowments Act. When this petition was pending before the learned District Judge of South Kanara the old Act was re-enacted as Act No. XIX of 1951. In the old Act section 9(3) defined Court as meaning the District Court. Under the new Act which came into operation on the 29th September, 1951, by a notification, section 6(1) and (2) defined the Court as the City Civil Court instead of the High Court and as sub-Court instead of the District Court. The effect of this enactment is that instead of the District Court, as in the previous Act, the Sub-Court became substituted for purposes of filing applications to set aside orders passed by the Hindu Religious Endowments Board. Similarly, instead of the High Court for purposes of proceedings within the City of Madras, the City Civil Court was substituted. Similarly under section 103(j), instead of the Board the authority by or against whom any proceedings could be instituted in the Court became the Commissioner of Religious Endowments instead of the Hindu Religious Endowments Board, as was the case under the old Act. The Explanation to section 103(j) of the new Act provides for the continuation of the proceedings so far as the High Court was concerned. Instead of the pending proceedings being continued in the High Court this provision states that they should be continued in the City Civil Court. Therefore, while there is a specific provision that proceedings now pending before the High Court should be continued in the City Civil Court, there is no corresponding provision in. the new Act governing pending proceedings in the mofussil Courts, apart from the substitution of the Sub-Court, for the District Court, provide for by section 6(6)(i).

Mr. Nambiar contends that in the absence of a specific provision on similar lines as the one contained in the Explanation to section 103(j), pending proceedings in the District Court cannot be transferred or cannot be deemed to have been automatically transferred to the Sub-Court. There is no provision, according to him, in the whole of the new Act which authorises the District Judge to transfer these proceedings to the sub-Court. Simply because the District Court had been specifically mentioned in the old Act, and in its place the Sub-Court has been specifically mentioned the general law, namely, the Civil Procedure Code, also would not entitle the District Court to transfer such proceedings to the sub-Court The provision in the new Act XIX of 1951 which has been relied upon by the learned District Judge, namely, section 103(j), only refers to the “continuation” of the pending proceedings by the “concerned authority.” It states that instead of the Board, as was the case previously, under this Act, it should be the Commissioner. The learned counsel for the respondents seeking to support the interpretation put upon this provision by the learned District Judge would seek to import into the meaning of this provision that the continuation by the Commissioner in place of the Board also would mean continuation in the new Court that has been substituted for the old Court. A reading of the language of this sub-clause (J) of section 103, in my opinion, does not warrant this extension of t