The judgment established that the right of an office-holder or servant to challenge the trustee's action in a Court of law can be precluded by statutory provisions, as evidenced by the interpretation of Section 43 of the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act, 1926.

Alfred Henry Lionel Leach, C.J.

1. This appeal raises the question whether an archaka of a temple who has been dismissed from his office by the trustee has a right to challenge the correctness of the trustees action in a Court of law or whether his remedy is limited by Section 43 of the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act, 1926, to an appeal to the Temple Committee or to the Religious Endowments Board as the case may be.

2. The appellant is admittedly a hereditary archaka of the Thirupalathurai temple in the Trichinopoly District. He is suffering from leucoderma and he was dismissed from his office by the trustee, ostensibly on this ground, but it would appear from the findings of both the lower Courts that the trustee was actuated by ill will towards the appellant. Section 43(1) of the Act states:

All office-holders and servants attached to a temple or in receipt of any emolument or perquisite from the temple shall be under the orders and control of the trustee; and the trustee may fine, suspend, remove or dismiss any of them for breach of trust, incapacity, disobedience of lawful orders, neglect of duty, misconduct or other sufficient cause.

3. By Sub-section (2), an office-holder or servant of a temple other than an excepted temple may appeal to the Committee whose decision shall, in the case of a non-hereditary office-holder or servant, be final. By Sub-section (3), a hereditary office-holder or servant of a temple other than an excepted temple may prefer an appeal to the Board against the order of the Committee on appeal under Sub-section (2) and the decision of the Board shall be final. The temple of which the appellant was an archaka is a non-excepted temple, but the appellant did not then appeal to the Committee against his dismissal by the trustee, but instituted a suit in the Court of the District Munsif, Kulitalai, for an injunction restraining the trustee from interfering with the appellants exercise of his office. The District Munsif held that the suit could be maintained and granted an injunction restraining the trustee from interfering with the discharge of the duties of his office. An appeal was filed in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Trichinopoly, who held that the appellant had no right of suit, and this decision was accepted by Wadsworth, J., on second appeal.

4. The right of the subject to appeal to the Court to redress a simple wrong can only be taken away by statute. As Varadachariar, J., observed in Kamaraja Pandiya Naicker v. The Secretary of State for India in Council (1934) 69 M.L.J. 695, the ordinary rule is where a persons liberty or property is interfered with under colour of statutory powers, he has a cause of action which the Civil Courts are bound to entertain, unless a bar to such entertainment has been enacted expressly or at least by necessary implication. It is said on behalf of the trustee that the right of the appellant to have recourse to the Court is taken away by Section 43. It is also said that Section 73 operates as a bar to the suit.

5. It is not necessary to consider the arguments which have been based on the wording of Section 73, because we accept the argument of the respondent that Section 43 must be read as taking away the right of the appellant to file a suit. If Section 43 stood alone, there would be much to be said for the appellants argument that his right to sue had not been taken away. It might be said that the word final in Section 43 was only to be read as meaning final so far as an appeal under the Act was concerned and not as intended to shut out the jurisdiction of the Court as was said in Valli Ammal v. The Corporation of Madras (1912)23MLJ531 , a case which arose under the Madras City Municipal Act of 1904. But Section 43 does not stand alone, and when the scheme of the Act and the provisions of Sections 53 and 54 are considered, no reasonable doubt can exist that the Legislature has used language which is intended to have the effect of ousting the jurisd