O R D E R

We have taken this extraordinary step in this matter taking note of a growing menace to the society. Lending money on interest without any license therefor, and on some security like cheques or title deeds of property partake a character not, in essence, different from ‘money lending business’. The definition under the Punjab Registration of Money Lenders Act, 1938 (for short ‘the Act’) will not take an instance of lending money for interest on accepting some security such as cheques or title deeds of a property within the sweep of business of money lending. In other words, in order to constitute such action as ‘business’, the person concerned must have been effecting continuous transactions of such nature. More than four and a half decades ago a Constitution Bench of this Court in Fatehchand Himmatlal & Ors. v. State of Maharashtra [(1977) 2 SCC 670] held thus:- “... The bulk of the beneficiaries are rural indigents and the rest urban workers. These are weaker sections for whom constitutional concern is shown because institutional credit instrumentalities have ignored them. Moneylending may be ancillary to commercial activity and benignant in its effects, but Moneylendin