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7. In our opinion, the demand by the State of Karnataka of the price of the mineral cannot be said to be levy of penalty or a penal action. The marginal note of the section-"penalties", creates a wrong impression. A reading of Section 21 shows that it deals with a variety of situations. Sub-sections (1), (2), (4), (4-A) and (6) are in the realm of criminal law. Sub-section (3) empowers the State Government or any authority authorized in this behalf to summarily evict a trespasser. Sub-section (5) empowers the State Government to recover rent, royalty or tax from the person who has raised the mineral from any land without any lawful authority and also empowers the State Government to recover the price thereof where such mineral has already been disposed of inasmuch as the same would not be available for seizure and confiscation. The provision as to recovery of price is in the nature of recovering the compensation and not penalty so also the power of the State Government to recover rent, royalty or tax in respect of any mineral raised without any lawful authority can also not be called a penal action. The underlying principle of sub-section (5) is that a person acting without any lawful authority must not find himself placed in a position more b advantageous than a person raising minerals with lawful authority.

14. In support of the submission that the demand for the price of mineral raised and exported is in the nature of penalty, the learned counsel for the appellants has relied on the marginal note of Section 21. According to Justice Singh, G.P.: Principles of Statutory Interpretation (8th Edn., 2001, at p.147), though the opinion is not uniform but the weight of authority is in favour of the view that the marginal note appended to a section cannot be used for construing the section. There is no justification for restricting the section by the marginal note nor does the marginal note control the meaning of the body of the section if the language employed therein is clear and spells out its own meaning. In Director of Public Prosecutions v. Schildkamp Lord Reid opined that a sidenote is a poor guide to the scope of a section for it can do no more than indicate the main subject with which the section deals and Lord Upjohn opined that a sidenote being a brief prcis of the section forms a most unsure guide to the construction of the enacting section and very rarely it might throw some light on the intentions of Parliament just as a punctuation mark.