Case: Bombay Dyeing &amp;Manufacturing Co., Ltd Vs. The State Of Bombay And Others

abandoned and the Banks were to transfer them to the State. Claims to the deposits might be made to the Commissioner of Revenue, who was to determine on their validity, his decision being open to review by the Courts. The validity of this law was questioned on the ground that the sufficient opportunity had not been given to the depositors to claim the deposits, and that as they could attack the law as unconstitutional, the Bank got no protection by payment to the State. In repelling this contention, the Supreme Court observed that the Act did not deprive the depositors of any of their rights, they being given ample opportunity to establish their rights, and that it merely substituted the State in the place of the Bank as their debtor. The Court also held that it was "with the Constitutional power of the State to protect the interests of depositors from the risks which attend long neglected accounts, by taking them into custody when they have been inactive, so long as to be presumptively abandoned." In Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Moore (U) (supra), the law was with reference to moneys payable on life insurance policies, which had matured. It provided that if those amounts had remained unclaimed for a period of seven years, then it had to be advertised by the companies in the manner provided therein, and if no claims were preferred thereafter, the amounts were to be paid to the State Comptroller for care and custody. In holding that the law was valid, the Court observed: "There is ample provision for notice to beneficiaries and for administrative and judicial hearing of their claims and payment of same. There is no possible injury to any beneficiary." 31. In Standard Oil Co. v. New Jeresey, (1950) 341 US 428: 95 Law Ed 1078 (W), the law related to shares and unpaid dividends, and provided for the State taking them over, if they remained unclaimed for a period of 14 years. There was a provision for notice to the unknown owners by advertisement. It was held following Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Moore (U) (supra), that the law was valid. 32.In the light of the above discussion, there cannot be any reasonable doubt that the impugned Act cannot be regarded as one relating to abandoned property.The period of three years mentioned in S. 2 (10) of the Act is merely the period of limitation mentioned in Art. 102 of the Limitation Act, and even taking into account the class of persons whose claims are dealt with in the Act, as counsel for respondents would have us do, the period cannot be regarded as adequate for raising a presumption as to abandonment. A more serious objection to viewing the legislation as one relating to abandoned claims is that there is no provision made in the Act for investigating the claims of the employees or for payment of the amounts due to them, if they established their claims.The purpose of a legislation with respect to abandoned property being, in the first instance, to safeguard the property for the benefit of the true owner and the State taking it over only in the absence of such claims, a law which vests the property absolutely in the State without regard to the claims of the true owners cannot be considered as one relating to abandoned property.This contention of the respondents must also be rejected. 33. In the result, we are of opinion that S. 3 (1) in the so far as it relates to unpaid accumulations in S. 3 (2) (b) is unconstitutional and void. 34. We have now to deal with the question as to the validity of S. 3 (1) and S. 3 (2) (a) of the Act, which require the employers to hand over to the Board the fines realised from the employees. So far as this item is concerned, the position of the employers is wholly different from what it is as regards unpaid accumulations. Section 8 of the Wages Act deals with the question of fines which could be imposed by the employer, and it provides that they should be entered in a separate register, and applied for the benefit of his employees. It is not denied by the appellant that under this provision the fines are constituted a trust fund and that the employers are bare trustees in respect of such fund. Now, the grievance of the appellant is that the Act deprives it of its rights as trustees, and vests them in the Board, and that, further while the beneficiaries under S. 8 of the Wages Act are its own employees, under S. 5 (2) of the impugned Act they include other persons as well. There might have been substance in the complaint that the appellant had been deprived of its rights as trustee if it had any beneficial interest in the Fund. But admittedly, it has none, and it is therefore difficult to hold that there has been such substantial deprivation of property, as will offend Art. 31 (2) according to the decisions in State of West Bengal v. Subodh, Gopal (A) and Dwarkadas Shriniwas of Bombay v. Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd. (B), (supra) or such unreasonable interference with rights to property, as will infringe Art. 19 (1) (f).It is argued with some emphasis that in enlarging the circle of beneficiaries, the Act has encroached on the rights of the employees of the appellant. But then, the trust is the creation not of the appellant but of the Legislature, which gave the employees certain rights which they did not have before, and what it can give, it can also take away or modify, and we do not see how the employers are aggrieved by it. We are of opinion that no valid grounds exist on which S. 3 (1) and S. 3 (2) (a) of the impugned Act could be attacked as unconstitutional, and they must accordingly be held to be valid.

Decision (1 = appeal accepted, 0 = rejected): 1

Explanation:
1[ds]Now, money is undoubtedly property, and it cannot be disputed that a person who has money does not cease to be its owner merely by reason of the fact that he owes debts in satisfaction of which it may have to be applied. Until the creditor takes appropriate proceedings under the law for the realisation of his debt and the title of the debtor is extinguished in those proceedings, the title to the property continues in the debtor. Mr. Kolah is therefore clearly right in his contention that the liability of the appellant to pay wages to the employees does not ipso facto extinguish its title to the moneys belonging to it even pro tanto, and that the effect, therefore, of S. 3 (1) is to take away money belonging to it10. On these decisions, it should follow that S. 3 of the impugned Act is bad as infringing Art. 31 (2), in that it deprives the appellant of its moneys without giving any compensationBut it is not disputed that this provision has no retrospective operation, and that the rights of the parties must be decided in accordance with the law as on the date of the writ application, and that on the provisions of the Constitution as they stood on that date and as interpreted in The State of West Bengal v. Subodh Gopal (A) (supra) and Dwarkadas Shriniwas of Bombay v. The Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd. (B) (supra), S. 3 (1) of the impugned Act would be obnoxious to Art. 31 (2). This should be sufficient to conclude this question in favour of the appellant, but the respondents contend that S. 3 (1) is not within the prohibition of Art. 31 (2), because it operates only on money, and money is not property for purposes of that ArticleBut it is not disputed that this provision has no retrospective operation, and that the rights of the parties must be decided in accordance with the law as on the date of the writ application, and that on the provisions of the Constitution as they stood on that date and as interpreted in The State of West Bengal v. Subodh Gopal (A) (supra) and Dwarkadas Shriniwas of Bombay v. The Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd. (B) (supra), S. 3 (1) of the impugned Act would be obnoxious to Art. 31 (2). This should be sufficient to conclude this question in favour of the appellant, but the respondents contend that S. 3 (1) is not within the prohibition of Art. 31 (2), because it operates only on money, and money is not property for purposes of that Article11. There is considerable authority in America that the power of eminent domain does not extend to the taking of money, the reason being that compensation which is to be paid in respect of money can only be money, and that, therefore, in substance it is a forced loan. In The State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh, 1952 SCR 889  : (AIR 1952 SC 252  ) (C), this view was adopted by Mahajan J., at pp. 943-944 (of SCR) : (p. 275 of AIR), by Mukherjea J., at p. 961 (of SCR): (p. 280 of AIR), and by Chandrasekhara Aiyar, J., at pp. 1015 to 1018 (of SCR): (pp. 295, 296 of AIR).It is arguedfor the respondents that the position under Art. 31 (2) is the same as in America, as the provision therein that either the amount of the compensation should be fixed or the principles on which and the manner in which compensation is to be determined should be specified, involves that what is taken is not moneyIt was argued that a law authorising the State to seize and destroy diseased cattle, noxious drugs and the like, could not be brought within Art. 19 (5) if the word restriction was to be narrowly construed, and that accordingly the power to restrict must be held to include, in appropriate cases, the power to prohibit the exercise of the right. That view does find support in the observations of Lord Porter in Commonwealth of Australia v. Bank of New South Wales, 1950 AC 235   at p. 311 (E); but the present legislation cannot be sustained even on the above interpretation of the word restriction, as S. 3 (1) of the Act deals with moneys and money cannot be likened to diseased cattle or noxious drugs so as to attract the exercise of police power under Art. 19 (5). It appears to us that whether we apply Art. 31 (2) or Art. 19 (5), the impugned Act cannot be upheld, and it must be struck down, unless we accept the other contentions which have been urged for the respondents in support of its validity. Those contentions are firstly, that the Act merely substitutes the Board as the creditor in the place of t he employees, and that Ss. 3 and 17 merely prescribe the mode in which the obligation is to be enforced and - that was the ground on which Chagla C. J., based his judgment; and secondly, that the impugned legislation is one in respect of abandoned property, and it is not open to attack as contravening either Art. 19 (1) (f) or Art. 31 (2)When an employee has done his work, the amount of wages earned by him becomes a debt due to him from the employer, and it is property which could be assigned under the law. If the employee had assigned the debt to the Board constituted under the Act, the latter would be entitled to recover it from the employer. And what could be done by act of parties can also be done by legislation. What we have to see, therefore, is whether on the provisions of the statute it could be held that there is a statutory transfer of the wages earned by the workman to the Board. Section 5 of the Act vests the amounts mentioned in S. 3 (2) in the Board, and S. 3 (1) directs that those amounts should be paid by the employer to the Board. Counsel for the appellant contends that there are in the Act no words of transfer of the debts to the Board, and that there is only a provision for payment of the amounts. But this is taking too narrow a view of the true scope of those provisions. Looking at the substance of the matter, we are of opinion that S. 3 (1) and S. 5 (1) do operate to transfer the debts due to the employees, to the Board14. It will be observed that the definition of "unpaid accumulations" takes in only payments due to the employees remaining unpaid within a period of three years after they become due. The intention of the Legislature obviously was that claims of the employees which are within time should be left to be enforced by them in the ordinary course of law, and that it is only when they become time-barred and useless to them that the State should step in and take them overNow, it is the settled law of this country that the statute of Limitation only bars the remedy but does not extinguish the debt.15. The position then is that under the law a debt subsists notwithstanding that its recovery is barred by limitation, and no argument has been addressed to us by the appellant that the transfer of such a debt is invalid; and indeed it could not be, in view of the provisions in the impugned Act, which release the debts due to the employees from the bar of limitation. Section 3 (1) provides that payment shall be made of the amounts specified in sub-cl. (2) "notwithstanding anything contained in any other law for the time being in force". A similar provision is again enacted in the second proviso to sub-s. (2) of S. 5 that "unpaid accumulations" and fines shall be paid to the Board "notwithstanding anything contained in the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, or any other law for the time being in force". One of those laws is the law of limitation, and the effect of these provisions is to suspend limitation in respect of the claims to which S. 3 (2) relates. To dispel any doubt as to whether it was competent to the Legislature of the Bombay State to modify the provisions of the Limitation Act, it should be stated that limitation is a topic enumerated in the Concurrent List, being Entry 13 in List III in Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, and under Art. 254 (2), the Stage Legislature can enact a law modifying the Central Act, provided it is reserved for consideration by the President and assented to by him, and that has been done in the present case. Cto the impugned Act, there is one other provision therein to which reference must be made, Section 17 provides that without prejudice to other modes of recovery, the sums payable to the fund under S. 3 may be recovered as arrears of land revenueOn the above analysis, there cannot be any doubt that the effect of the relevant provisions of the Act is to transfer to the Board the debts due by the appellant to its employees free from the bar of limitationThis argument rests on the supposition that so far as unpaid wages are concerned, the operation of the Wages Act is co-extensive with that of the impugned Act. But that clearly is erroneous. It is true that wages as defined in the Wages Act would include whatever are wages under the impugned Act. But S. 1 (6) limits the application of the Wages Act to wages which are below Rs. 200 for a wage period. In respect of wages of Rs. 200 or more, it is the general law that would apply, and the period of limitation is not one year under S. 15 of the Wages Act but three years under Art. 102 of the Limitation Act, which period is capable of extension under the provisions of the Limitation Act beyond the three years mentioned in S. 2 (10) of the impugned Act. Then, it is to be noted that under the proviso to S. 15 (1), the authority has the power to admit a petition even beyond the period mentioned there, if sufficient cause is shown therefor. To this, the reply of the respondents is that as on the terms of S. 3 (1) and the second proviso to S. 5 (2) they are to take effect notwithstanding anything contained in the Wages Act or any other law, they override the power conferred by the proviso to S. 15 (1) of the Wages Act or the provisions of the Limitation Act20. Even as regards S. 22 of the Wages Act, there is divergence of judicial opinion as to its true scope. In Simpalax Manufacturing Co. Ltd. v. Alla-Ud-Din, AIR 1945 Lah 195 (L), it was held that if there was any bona fide dispute as to the amount payable, the jurisdiction of the Civil Court was not barred by S. 22, On the other hand, it was held in Bhagwat Rai v. Union of India, ILR (1953) Nag 433: (AIR 1953 Nag 136) (M), that the jurisdiction of the Civil Court would be barred, even if there was a bona fide dispute, and that the bar under S. 22 (d) was absolute, and certain observations in Modern Mills Ltd. v. Mangalvedhekar, AIR 1950 Bom 342   (N) and A. R. Sarin v. B. C. Patil, AIR 1951 Bom 423   (O), were relied on, as supporting this contention. Even if Mr. Seervai is right in his contention that the law is correctly laid down in Bhagwat Rai v. Union of India (M), and that the decision in Simpalax Manufacturing Co. Ltd. v. Alla-Ud-Din (L), is wrong, the fact remains that claims in respect of unpaid wages to which the impugned Act applies must, in view of S. 1 (6) of the Wages Act, fall at least in part outside the purview of that Act, and the protection afforded by S. 15 of that Act will not be available with reference thereto22. The impugned Act, it should be noted, merely enacts that all unpaid accumulations should be paid to the Board. It makes no distinction between claims for unpaid wages which are barred by limitation and those which are not so barred23. It has been already mentioned that when a debt becomes time-barred, it does not become extinguished but only unenforceable in a Court of law. Indeed, it is on that footing that there can be a statutory transfer of the debts due to the employees, and that is how the Board gets title to them. If then a debt subsists even after it is barred by limitation, the employer does not get, in law, a discharge therefrom. The modes in which an obligation under a contract becomes discharged are well-defined, and the bar of limitation is not one of themhe following passages in Ansons Law of Contract, 19th Edition, page 383, are directly in point:"At common Law lapse of time does not affect contractual rights. Such a right is of a permanent and indestructible character, unless either from the nature of the contract, or from its terms, it be limited in point of durationBut though the right possesses this permanent character, the remedies arising from its violation are withdrawn after a certain lapse of time; interest reipublicae ut si finis litium. The remedies are barred, though the right is not extinguished."And if the law requires that a debtor should get a discharge before he can be compelled to pay, that requirement is not satisfied if he is merely told that in the normal course he is not likely to be exposed to action by the creditor24. That this distinction is not purely academical but is of practical importance will be seen, when regard is had to the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act. Under that act, there is no period of limitation prescribed for referring a dispute for adjudication by a tribunalEven when a claim for wages falls within the purview of the Wages Act and an application under S. 15 of that Act would be barred it can nevertheless give rise to an industrial dispute in respect of which action can be taken under the provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act. It was held by the Federal Court in Shamnugger Jute Factory Co. Ltd. (North) v. S. N. Modak, 1949 FCR 365: (AIR 1949 FC 150( S), that S. 22 (d) of the Wages Act did not take away the power of the authorities to refer to a tribunal set up under the Industrial Disputes Act a claim which could be made under the Wages Act, as that section had application only to suits and did not exclude other proceedings permitted by law for the enforcement of payment. If a tribunal appointed under that Act can direct an employer to make payment of wages, it follows that the bar under S. 15 of the Wages Act does not give an absolute protection to the employer,and the same consequence must follow when the bar of limitation arises under the Limitation Act. The result therefore is that when an employer makes a payment under S. 3 (1) of the Act he gets no discharge from his obligation to the employees, even when the enforcement thereof is barred by limitationWe are not satisfied that the performance of the contract of service has been rendered impossible by reason of S. 3 (1) of the impugned Act. But assuming that that is the position, what follows?.The matter would then be governed by S. 65 of the Contract Act, which provides that when a contract becomes void, any person who has received any advantage under such agreement or contract is bound to restore it or to make compensation for it to the person from whom he received it.Under this section, the employer is liable to make compensation to the employee for the work done by him, and that liability can be enforced against him in spite of the fact that he has paid the unclaimed wages to the Board under S. 3 (1) of the Act. We are therefore of opinion that even if the matter is governed by S. 56 of the Contract Act, the employer is no more discharged than by the operation of the bar of limitation under S. 15 of the Wages Act, or the provisions of the Limitation Act. In this view, it must be held that the provisions of the impugned Act are unconstitutional, in that they take away the property of the appellant in violation of either Art. 19 (1) (f) or Art. 31 (2) of the ConstitutionNow, as the Act takes over the rights of the employees in respect of wages due to them even when they are not barred without making any provision for compensation of the same to them, it must at least to that extent be held to be unconstitutional, whether as contravening Art. 19 (1) (f) or Art. 31 (2) it is unnecessary to decide28. It is then argued that this is an objection open only to the employees, and that the appellant can make no grievance of it.It is no doubt true that a question as to the constitutionality of a statute can be raised only by a person who is aggrieved by it; but here, the statute deals with rights arising out of contract, and that presupposes the existence of at least two parties with mutual rights and obligations, and it is difficult to see how when the rights of one party to it are interfered with, those of the other can remain unaffected by it.Let us assume that the appellant makes a payment to the Board under S. 3 (1) of the impugned Act on the footing that the law is not unconstitutional as against him. What is there to prevent the employee from suing to recover the same amount from the appellant on the ground that the Act is unconstitutional? It will be no answer to that claim to plead that the appellant has already paid the amount to the Board.The fact is that a statute which operates on a contract must affect the rights of all the parties to the contract, and if it is bad as regards one of them, it should be held to be bad as regards the others as well.It is unnecessary to pursue this question further, as we have held that the Act is unconstitutional even as regards the appellant29. It remains to deal with the contention of the respondents that the impugned legislation is, in substance, one in respect of abandoned property, and that, by its very nature, it cannot be held to violate the rights of any person either under Art. 19 (1) (f) or Art. 31 (2). That would be the correct position if the character of the legislation is what the respondents claim it to be, for it is only a person who has some interest in property that can complain that the impugned legislation invades that right whether it be under Art. 19 (1) (f) or Art. 31 (2), and if it is abandoned property, ex hypothesis there is no one who has any interest in it. But can the impugned Act be held to be legislation with respect to abandoned property?There is, however, this distinction between the two classes of property that while the State becomes the owner of the properties of a person who dies intestate as his ultimate heir, it merely takes possession of property which is abandoned.At common law, abandoned personal property could not be the subject of escheat. It could only be appropriated by the Sovereign as bona vacantia. Vide Holdsworths History of English Law, Second Edition, Vol. 7, pages 495-496. In Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance co. v. Moore, (1947) 333 US 541 at p. 546: 92 Law Ed 863 at p. 869 (U),the-principle behind the law was stated to be that "the State may, more properly, be custodian and beneficiary of abandoned property than any other person."Consistently with the principle stated above, a law relating to abandoned property enacts firstly provisions for the State conserving and safeguarding for the benefit of the true owners property in respect of which no claim is made for a specified and reasonable period, and secondly, for those properties vesting in the State absolutely when no claim is made with reference thereto by the true owners within a time limited32.In the light of the above discussion, there cannot be any reasonable doubt that the impugned Act cannot be regarded as one relating to abandoned property.The period of three years mentioned in S. 2 (10) of the Act is merely the period of limitation mentioned in Art. 102 of the Limitation Act, and even taking into account the class of persons whose claims are dealt with in the Act, as counsel for respondents would have us do, the period cannot be regarded as adequate for raising a presumption as to abandonment. A more serious objection to viewing the legislation as one relating to abandoned claims is that there is no provision made in the Act for investigating the claims of the employees or for payment of the amounts due to them, if they established their claims.The purpose of a legislation with respect to abandoned property being, in the first instance, to safeguard the property for the benefit of the true owner and the State taking it over only in the absence of such claims, a law which vests the property absolutely in the State without regard to the claims of the true owners cannot be considered as one relating to abandoned property.This contention of the respondents must also be rejected33. In the result, we are of opinion that S. 3 (1) in the so far as it relates to unpaid accumulations in S. 3 (2) (b) is unconstitutional and voidSo far as this item is concerned, the position of the employers is wholly different from what it is as regards unpaid accumulations. Section 8 of the Wages Act deals with the question of fines which could be imposed by the employer, and it provides that they should be entered in a separate register, and applied for the benefit of his employees. It is not denied by the appellant that under this provision the fines are constituted a trust fund and that the employers are bare trustees in respect of such fund. Now, the grievance of the appellant is that the Act deprives it of its rights as trustees, and vests them in the Board, and that, further while the beneficiaries under S. 8 of the Wages Act are its own employees, under S. 5 (2) of the impugned Act they include other persons as well. There might have been substance in the complaint that the appellant had been deprived of its rights as trustee if it had any beneficial interest in the Fund. But admittedly, it has none, and it is therefore difficult to hold that there has been such substantial deprivation of property, as will offend Art. 31 (2) according to the decisions in State of West Bengal v. Subodh, Gopal (A) and Dwarkadas Shriniwas of Bombay v. Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd. (B), (supra) or such unreasonable interference with rights to property, as will infringe Art. 19 (1)t is arguedwith some emphasis that in enlarging the circle of beneficiaries, the Act has encroached on the rights of the employees of the appellant. But then, the trust is the creation not of the appellant but of the Legislature, which gave the employees certain rights which they did not have before, and what it can give, it can also take away or modify, and we do not see how the employers are aggrieved by it. We are of opinion that no valid grounds exist on which S. 3 (1) and S. 3 (2) (a) of the impugned Act could be attacked as unconstitutional, and they must accordingly be held to be valid9. Subsequent to this decision, this Court had occasion to consider the true scope of Art. 31 (2) in relation to Art. 31 (1) in The State of West Bengal v. Subodh Gopal, 1954 SCR 587  : (AIR 1954 SC 92  ) (A) and in Dwarkadas Shrinivas of Bombay v. The Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd., 1954 SCR 674  : (AIR 1954 SC 119  ) (B). In The State of West Bengal v. Subodh Gopal (A) (supra), the majority of the learned Judges took the view that Arts. 31 (1) and 31 (2) were not mutually exclusive, that it was not an essential requisite of acquisition under Art. 31 (2) that there should be a transfer of title to the State, that deprivation of property and substantial abridgement of the rights of the owner were also within Art. 31 (2), and that a law which produced those results must, in order to be valid, satisfy the conditions laid down in that Article. Das J., (as he then was) differed from this view, and held that the contents of the two provisions were distinct, that while Art. 31 (1) had reference to the "police power" of the State, Art. 31 (2) dealt with the power of "eminent domain". In Dwarkadas Shrinivas of Bombay v. The Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Co. Ltd. (B) (supra), the majority of the Judges again reiterated the view expressed in The State of West Bengal v. Subodh Gopal Bose (A) (supra) that Arts. 31 (1) and 31 (2) covered the same ground, and that substantial interference with rights to property would be within the operation of Art. 31 (2).