MUNICIPAL COUNCIL, RATLAM V. VARDICHAND, (1980) 4 SCC 162
MUNICIPAL COUNCIL, RATLAM V. VARDICHAND, (1980) 4 SCC 162
FACTS
In this, the Ratlam Municipality (appellant) challenges the sense and soundness of the High Court’s affirmation of the trial Court’s order directing the construction of drainage facilities in the Ratlam city.
CASE HISTORY
The Ratlam municipal town is populous with human and subhuman species is punctuated with affluence and indigence in contrasting coexistence, and keeps public sanitation a low priority item, what with cesspools and filth menacing public health. Ward No. 12, New Road, Ratlam town is an area where prosperity and poverty live as strange bedfellows. The city is filled with cesspools and stinks, dirtied the place beyond endurance. Another contributory cause to the insufferable situation was the discharge from the Alcohol Plant of malodorous fluids into the public street. As a result, the mosquitoes were breeding in the streets. Hence , the residents before the Magistrate.
ISSUES
- Whether there can be any legal pleas to absolve the municipality from the court’s directive under Section 133 Cr PC?
- Whether by affirmative action a court can compel a statutory body to carry out its duty to the community by constructing sanitation facilities at great cost and on a time-bound basis?
CASES REFERRED
Govind Singh v. Shanti Sarup 1979 AIR 143:
We are of the opinion that in a matter of this nature where what is involved is not merely the right of a private individual but the health, safety and convenience of the public at large, the safer course would be to accept the view of the learned Magistrate, who saw for himself the hazard resulting from the working of the bakery
JUDGEMENT
Section 123 of the M.P. Municipalities Act, 1961 casts a mandate:
Duties of Council. - (1) In addition to the duties imposed upon it by or under this Act or any other enactment for the time being in force, it shall be the duty of a Council to undertake and make reasonable and adequate provision for the following matters within the limits of the municipality, namely - (b) cleansing public streets, places and sewers, and all places, not being private property, which are open to the enjoyment of the public whether such places are vested in the Council or not; removing noxious vegetation, and abating all public nuisances; (c) disposing of night-soil and rubbish and preparation of compost manure from night-soil and rubbish.
The Court said that the municipality was oblivious to this obligation towards human well-being and was directly guilty of breach of duty and public nuisance and active neglect. Had the municipal council and its executive officers spent half of this litigative zeal on cleaning up the street and constructing the drains by rousing the people’s sramdan resources and laying out the city’s limited financial resources, the people’s needs might have been largely met long ago.
The Magistrate, whose activist application of Section 133 Cr PC, for the larger purpose of making the Ratlam municipal body do its duty and abate the nuisance by affirmative action, has our appreciation.
Section 133 CrPC mandate:
The Court held that the guns of Section 133 go into action wherever there is public nuisance. The public power of the magistrate under the Code is a public duty to the members of the public who are victims of the nuisance, and so he shall exercise it when the jurisdictional facts are present as here. “All power is a trust - that we are accountable for its exercise - that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.”
The Court further held that the magistrate’s responsibility under Section 133 Cr PC is to order removal of such nuisance within a time to be fixed in the order. This is a public duty implicit in the public power to be exercised on behalf of the public and pursuant to a public proceeding. Failure to comply with the direction will be visited with a punishment contemplated by Section 188 IPC. Therefore, the Municipal Commissioner or other executive authority bound by the order under Section 133 Cr PC shall obey the direction because disobedience, if it causes obstruction or annoyance or injury to any persons lawfully, pursuing their employment, shall be punished with simple imprisonment or fine as prescribed in the section. The offence is aggravated if the disobedience tends to cause danger to human health or safety. The imperative tone of Section 133 Cr PC read with the punitive temper of Section 188 IPC make the prohibitory act a mandatory duty.
Financial inability of the Municipality not an acceptable plea: The statutory setting being thus plain, the municipality cannot extricate itself from its responsibility. The plea of the municipality that notwithstanding the public nuisance financial inability validly exonerates it from statutory liability has no juridical basis. The criminal procedure code operates against statutory bodies and others regardless of the cash in their coffers, even as human rights under Part III of the Constitution have to be respected by the State regardless of budgetary provision. Likewise, Section 123 of the Act has no saving clause when the municipal council is penniless. Otherwise, a profligate statutory body or pachydermic governmental agency may legally defy duties under the law by urging in selfdefence a self-created bankruptcy or perverted expenditure budget. That cannot be.
A responsible municipal council constituted for the precise purpose of preserving public health and providing better finances cannot run away from its principal duty by pleading financial inability. Decency and dignity are non-negotiable facets of human rights and are a first charge on local self-governing bodies.
The Court also agrees with the High Court in rejecting the plea that the time specified in the order is unworkable.