The main legal point established in the judgment is that the requirement of notice under Section 424 of the Civil Procedure Code applies to all suits against the Secretary of State for India in Council, and introducing exceptions to this requirement is not within the province of a Court of Justice.

Sundara Aiyar, J.

1. This second appeal must be disposed of on the objection taken by the defendant, the Secretary of State for India in Council, that the suit is not maintainable as no notice of it was given as required by Section 424 of the old code corresponding to Section 80 of Act V. of 1908. The plaint states that the Board of Revenue passed an illegal order that a certain sum of money not due by the plaintiff to Government should be collected from him and that "on account of the said order the plaintiffs have lost peace of mind and are much troubled." The plaintiffs ask for a decree granting an injunction restraining the 1st defendant, that is the Secretary of State for India in Council or any of his servants from collecting any amount from the plaintiff. The Subordinate Judge held that no notice was required under Section 424, C.P.C. in such a case. The view he took was that the section applied only to suits for damages. This position is in our opinion entirely untenable. Section 424 enacted "No it shall be instituted against the Secretary of State for India in Council or against a public officer in respect of an act purporting to be done by him in his official capacity, until the expiration of two months next after notice in writing has been, in the case of the Secretary of State for India in Council, delivered to, or left at the office of, the Secretary to the Local Government or the Collector of the District." The contention before us is that the section applies only when the suit is in respect of an act purporting to be done and this it is said, does not include a suit for an injunction but only one for damages arising from the act done. The case for the respondent has been argued with great fullness and ability by the learned Vakil who has appaared for him but he has been unable to pursuade us that the view adopted in the decided cases, which is against him, is wrong. Two arguments have been urged on the meaning of the language of the section. It is contended that the words in respect of any act purporting to be done by him qualify both The Secretary of State for India in Council and public officer. In the Government edition of the statute there is a comma after the word Council. The object of the comma evidently was to show that the phrase purporting to be done did not apply to Secretary of State for India in Council. It is argued that punctuation cannot he taken note of in construing a statute. There is no doubt authority in English cases for this position but no Indian case has been cited to us and it may be permissible to express a doubt whether the considerations which induced Judges in England to lay down such a rule would be equally applicable in the construction of statutes in this country. The question however does not depend on the punctuation alone. Now the expression Secretary of State for India in Council is, as urged by Mr. Krishnaswami Aiyar for his own purposes, merely a. name under which the Government is to be sued and does not denote either individual or a corporation. See Kinlock v. Secretary of State for India in Council (1880) 15 Ch. D. 1. If that be so, to speak of an act being done by the Secretary of State for India in Council understood in that sense seems to involve some straining of language although it is pointed out that in Secretary of State for India in Council v. Rajlucki Debi (1897) I.L.L. 25 C. 239 at 243 Maclean C.J. was of opinion that an act done by a public officer who is subjected to the authority of the Secretary of State for India in Council has no other than any official capacity assuming that he has any capacity at all and that the expression is not a mere name. This makes it unlikely that any distinction was intended to by made between the acts of Secretary of State for India in Council in bis official capacity and other acts of his. On all these grounds we entertain no doubt that the phrase purporting to be done was intended to apply only to public officer.

2.