Jivabhai Purshottam vs Chhagan Karson And Others on 27 March, 1961
9. So far, I have assumed that there accrued to the appellant a vested right on 3rd December 1958, on the failure of the Board to issue the notice required by Section 7 (4) of the unamended Act on or before 2nd December, 1958. But it seems to me that the entire argument of a vested fight stems from a misconception--in fact, two misconceptions. The first is that the licence. Ext. A, is for an initial term of 25 years with provision for automatic renewals for further periods of 10 years each in the absence of notice, and the second that Section 7 (4) makes provision for such notice. Had that been the case, it might have been possible to maintain that, on the failure of the Board to serve notice on the appellant on or before 2nd December 1958, there vested in the appellant on 3rd December 1958 a further term of 10 years--the circumstance that this term would commence only on 3rd December 1960 would be no bar to the vesting. For, the case considered by the Supreme Court in Jivabhai v. Chhagan AIR 1961 SC 1491, was the converse case of a lease determining on the expiry of the period of notice and might not apply. The corresponding right of the landlord to get possession would, in such a case, accrue only on the determination of the lease, in other words, on the expiry of the period of notice, not on its commencement. But, in the converse case of a term vesting on the failure to give the requisite notice, it might be possible to argue that this term vests when the failure occurs, in other words, when the last day for giving notice passes without notice being given, and not on the expiry of the original term. But, as we have already seen, what we have in the present case is not a licence for a particular term with provision for successive renewals, but a permanent licence with provision made by statute for the compulsory purchase of the licensee's undertaking at stated intervals after due notice, the effect of such a purchase, when the purchaser is the Government, being to stop the further operation of the licence. The statute, namely, Section 7 of the unamended Act, vests no right in the licensee. What it does is to give the Government and the local authority (after Act 54 of 1948, the Board, if any, constituted under that Act) the right of purchase, exercisable in a particular way. At the most what can be said, taking the present case as an illustration is that on the failure of the Board to issue a notice in time, there vested in the appellant on the 3rd December 1958 an immunity from compulsory acquisition until the 3rd December 1970 under the provisions of Section 7 of the unamended Act, not be it noted, a general or absolute immunity. But of what avail would this immunity under a repealed enactment be against the larger rights conferred by the new enactment with no provision made for saving it? Especially when, as in this case, the right conferred by the new enactment is a new right conferred on new persons--it will be remembered that under Section 7 of the unamended Act read with Section 71 of Act 54 of 1948 the only person entitled to the option was the State Electricity Board, and that what Section 6 of the amended Act did was to confer the right of option for the first time on the State Government and the local authority who were in no sense successors of the State Electricity Board. No one has a vested interest in a statute, and if one statute is replaced by another conferring new or larger rights on others, the person on whom the corresponding obligation is cast cannot complain that the new statute is being retrospectively applied against him on the score that under the terms of the old statute he was under no such obligation. As well might the appellant have contended, if the unamended Act made no provision for the compulsory acquisition of his undertaking, that there had accrued to him an immunity against compulsory acquisition, and that Section 6 of the amended Act could not be applied so as to take away that vested right.