Goonewardene V. The Chairman

Present: Mr. Justice Wood Renton.

In the Matter of an Application under Section 42 of Ordinance No. 7 of 1887.

GOONEWARDENE et al. v. THE CHAIRMAN, Municipal Council, Galle.

Municipal Councils' Ordinance (No. 7 of 1887), ss. 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 41, and 42-Refusal to insert names of voters-Application to the Supreme Court-Jurisdiction of Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has no power to revise orders made by the Chairman of the Municipal Council, under section 42 of Ordinance No. 7 of 1887, refusing to insert the names of voters in the list prepared for the triennial elections.

APPLICATION by a number of voters in Ward No. 5 of the Municipality of Galle to revise certain orders made by the Chairman, under section 42 of the Municipal Councils' Ordinance (No. 7 of 1887), refusing to insert their names in the triennial list of voters.

H. Bartholomeusz, for the applicants.

W. S. de Saram, for the Chairman.

Cur. adv. vult.

October 31, 1908. Wood Renton J.-

In the present case, I am invited on behalf of a number of voters in Ward No. 5 of the Municipality of Galle to revise certain orders made by the Chairman, under section 42 of the Municipal Councils' Ordinance, No. 7 of 1887, refusing to insert their names in the triennial list of voters which has been prepared with a view to the ensuing Municipal elections. At the very threshold of the case I am faced with the question whether, under the law as it now stands, the Supreme Court has any jurisdiction to entertain such an application at all. I am indebted to Mr. Bartholomeusz for having put clearly and forcibly before the Court all that can be urged in favour of an affirmative answer to this question. But I have come to the conclusion that it must be answered in the negative; and I propose to state the grounds of my decision as clearly and as briefly as I can.

Sections 13, and the following sections of the Municipal Councils' Ordinance provide machinery for the settlement and publication of the list of persons who are respectively entitled to be elected and to vote on the original constitution of a Municipality. As they stood in the unamended Ordinance of 1887: sections 15 to 18 enabled any voter (I am confining myself to the particular class of case now before me) who was dissatisfied with the omission of his name from the original list to apply in writing within seven days from the date of the publication of the notice of its completion, to the Chairman or Government Agent, whoever should have prepared the list, in question, to have his name inserted in such list, and in the event of his application being refused, he had the right to apply to a Magistrate-a term defined in section 3 of the Ordinance as the Police Magistrates having jurisdiction within the Municipality-for an order for its insertion. The Ordinance went so far as to provide for a summary inquiry by the Magistrate into the merits of the application, and empowered him, after such inquiry, to make such order, as to the insertion or omission of the name of the applicant, and as to the payment of the costs of the inquiry, as he thought just. And it further provided that such order, " if it direct the insertion of any name in such list, " shall be forthwith complied with " by the Chairman or the Government Agent, as the case may be. "

Section 42 of the original Ordinance dealt with a different state of things. It related to the new lists of voters which, under section 41, the Chairman is directed to prepare with a view to the triennial election in the month of September in every third year; and it provided that any person claiming to be qualified to vote, whose name had been omitted from such list, may, " in accordance with the provisions contained in sections 15 and 16, apply to the Chair man to insert any such name, and, if need be, to a Magistrate for an order of insertion; and every order made by such Magistrate on any such application directing the in

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