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11. What was the effect of such repeal? We need no longer search for English authorities as to whether the Interpretation Act of 1889 applies to the repeal of temporary statutes. By the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of State of Punjab v. Mohar Singh, , it has now been finally decided that Section 6 of the Indian General Clauses Act applies not only to repeal of a permanent statute but also to the repeal of a temporary statute before its expiry by (sic) of time. The case before the Supreme Court was a case of a repeal of a Governor's Ordinance by an Act of the State Legislature. It is therefore not clear why it was decided by reference to the provisions of the central General Clauses Act, but the judgment points out the identity between the provisions of the Indian and the Punjab General Classes Acts and since the provisions of the Bengal General Clauses Act are also identical, the rule as to their applicability must obviously be the same. The repeal of the Act of 1950 must therefore be held to have attracted the provisions of Section 8 of the Bengal General Clauses Act. The next question is what the effect of those provisions has been upon and after the repeal.

13. Prom the above it must be clear that where the repealed Act is a permanent Act, the effect of Section 8 of the Bengal General Clauses Act is to restore it, for the purposes specified, as such Act, unless the repealing Act shows a contrary intention; and upon such restoration of the Act, the rights and liabilities accrued and incurred under it before the repeal, can be enforced and proceedings in regard to them can be commenced or continued to completion at or up to any time, unless forbidden by the law of limitation or other-wise the restoied Act being a permanent one. But where the repealed Act is a temporary Act, it is restored only as an Act due to expire on the date originally specified. There can be no other effect of deeming the repealing Act as not passed. Upto the original date of its expiry, rights and liabilities accrued and incurred under the Act before its repeal can be enforced and proceedings in regard to them under the Act can be instituted or continued by virtue of Section 8 because by virtue of that section, the Act will remain in force upto that date for the purposes of such rights, liabili-ties and proceedings. But once that cate has passed, Section 8 will have spent itself. The tempor-rary Act will then have expired under its own terms and the position in regard to rights and liabilities, accrued and incurred under it before its reyeal and in regard to proceedings under the Act respecting them, whether pending or intended, will then be as in the case of an expired temporary statute. Whether or not such rights and liabilities can still be claimed and enforred and whether proceedings under the Act in regard to them can still be instituted or continued, will depend on the general incidents of temporary statutes and the construction of the particular Act.

14. I expressed this view of Section 8 in connection with a similar repeal of the Act of 1948 by the Act of 1950 in the Pull Bench case of T.S.R. Sarma v. Nagendra Bala Debt ; and earlier, sitting with P. N. Mookerjee J., I expressed the same view in N. K. Dey and Sons v. Eastern Stock and Agency Ltd., Civil Rule No. 1749 of 1951, D/- 9-8-1951 (Cal) (C). I heard nothing in the course of the arguments in the present cases which I find to require me to modify that view. It was contended that the effect of the words "as if the repealing Act had not been passed", occurring in Section 8, was only to emphasise the i'act that the repeal would in no way affect rights and liabilities, already accrued and incurred, b:.'t not, also to keep attaching to them their limitations under the repealed Act. I do not consider that contention tenable because it is contrary to the natural meaning of the words and contrary also to the manifest object of the section. The section, as I have tried to explain, only saves accrued rights and liabilities; as they were under the repealed Act, from the effect of the repeal and similarly it saves proceedings so far as they might be warranted by that Act. It does no more. The principle is well established that in the case of temporary statutes, no proceedings can be taken under them after their expiry and proceedings, already commenced, terminate ipso facto, unless there is a special provision to the contrary; and it is an ordinary principle of law that in order that the provisions of an Act may be applied, it should be in force at the time. It would be strange indeed if an enactment were to" provide that although, if a temporary Act was allowed to run out in the ordinary course, rights and liabilities accrued and incurred under it and proceedings warranted by its provisions would be subject thereafter to the limitations of its temporary nature, yet, if the Act was repealed before its expiry, those limitations were no longer to be regarded. To say so would be to say that a repeal of a temporary Act would enlarge its scope. In terms of the present cases it would be to say that although the Act of 1950 was due to die on the expiry of the 31st March, 1956, yet, by being killed at the previous midnight, it acquired a longer and. in fact, a permanent lease of life. Section 8 of the Bengal General Clauses Act says no such thing but, on the other hand, says the contrary by providing for the restoration of the repealed Act, as it was, whether a permanent or a temporary Act. aS I have already explained, where the repealed Act was a permanent Act. no difficulty can arise from the Act itself as regards the subsequent enforcement of accrued rights and liabilities or the commencement or continuation of proceedings under the Act in regard to them, because, the Act being a permanent Act and being maintained for the purposes of such matters by Section 8. it will always be in force. But where the repealed Act was a tem-

20. In the course of its Judgment, however, the privy Council made the following observation :

"The application of the Act is when the parties begin to move under it. This was done in the present case before March, 1924. The rest is merely the working out of the application".

21. It was said that by the making of that observation, the Privy Council had "swept away" the principles relating to the effect of the expiry of temporary statutes, so far as their application in India was concerned. I am unable to agree that any such thing was done. All that the Privy Council did by that observation was to point out that the case before it was not a case of a proceeding under the Act commenced after the Act had ceased to apply to the premises concerned, but it was a case of a continuation of a proceeding, commenced when the premises were still governed by the Act. The proceeding could be carried on to its completion, because the Act. as an operative Act, was still subsisting and the provision for an appeal to the President had in no way been affected. It was contended that the Privy Council knew that the Act was going to expire at the end of March, 1927 and if it yet remitted the case for a decision by the President of the appeal before him on the 24th of February, 1927 and made a similar order on the 28th of January, 1928 in the next case of the Karnani Industrial Bank Ltd. v. Satya Niranjan Shaw, 32 Cal WN 1093: (AIR 1928 PC 227) (F), it must be regarded as having held by implication that proceedings under the Act might be validly continued even after its expiry. I am unable to see that that argument proves anything. In the first place, it cannot be proper to infer from a judgment a decision on a point which was never argued or considered. The respondent was not represented in the first case and the second case merely followed the first, without any question being raised as to considerations arising from a total expiry of the Act. In the second place, the orders made by the Privy Council, assuming they can be read as containing a decision that proceedings under the Act might be validly continued even after its total expiry, do not and cannot establish that, in the view of the Privy Council, the principles relating to the effect of the expiry of temporary statutes did not apply in India. It is not that, according to those principles, the expiry of a temporary statute inevitably brings proceedings initiated under it to an end. Even according to those principles, proceedings commenced under the Act of 1920 might be continued alter its' expiry if it appeared from the construction of the Act that such proceedings, pending at the date of the expiry, were intended to be continued. The Privy Council was not asked to construe the Act with a view to determining the effect of its expiry on pending proceedings end did not say that no such construction was necessary, because the principles governing temporary statutes in England did not apply in India. The mere passing of an order, involving a direction for a continuation or possible continuation of proceedings after the expiry of the temporary Act, does not therefore show that the application of principles relative to the expiry of temporary statutes was ruled out. If it was its intention to rule out; the application of such well-established principles, it is hardly credible that the Privy Council should have done so in such an indirect manner instead of giving a direct decision.