The State of Rajasthan and Ors. vs Thakur Pratap Singh

Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Civil Appeal No. 231 of 1956

Decision Date: 18 August 1960

Coram: N. Rajagopala Ayyangar, S.K. Das, M. Hidayatullah, K.C. Das Gupta, J.C. Shah

The case titled The State of Rajasthan and Others versus Thakur Pratap Singh was decided on 18 August 1960 by the Supreme Court of India. The opinion was authored by Justice N. Rajagopala Ayyangar, who was joined on the bench by Justices S. K. Das, M. Hidayatullah, K. C. Das Gupta and J. C. Shah. The petition was filed by the State of Rajasthan along with other respondents, and the opposing party was Thakur Pratap Singh. The judgment carries the citation 1960 AIR 1208 and is also reported in NF 1976 SC 490 (182). The matter concerned the validity of a government notification under section 15 of the Police Act, 1861 (V of 1861) that exempted Harijan and Muslim inhabitants of certain villages from bearing any share of the cost of an additional police force deployed in those villages. The notification was challenged on the ground that it violated the guarantee of equality under article 15(1) of the Constitution of India. The Court held that paragraph 4 of the notification discriminated in favour of Harijans and Muslims on the basis of caste and religion, thereby attracting the prohibitions of article 15(1) and necessitating its declaration as invalid.

The appeal, recorded as Civil Appeal No. 231 of 1956, arose from a judgment and order dated 11 September 1953 of the Rajasthan High Court (Jaipur Bench) in Writ Application No. 141 of 1952. Counsel for the appellants were M. S. K. Sastri and T. M. Sen, while the respondent did not appear before the Court. The Court’s judgment, delivered by Justice Rajagopala Ayyangar, examined whether the specific paragraph of the Rajasthan Government’s notification was constitutionally permissible. The factual backdrop stated that certain villages in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan were harbouring dacoits and persons who received stolen property, and that disturbances between landlords and tenants had escalated into serious riots in which lives were lost. Consequently, the State Government invoked section 15 of the Police Act to address the disturbance. Section 15 empowers the State Government, by proclamation published in the official Gazette, to declare an area as disturbed or dangerous and to authorize the quartering of an additional police force, the cost of which, subject to certain provisions, is ordinarily to be borne by the inhabitants of the declared area.

The Court recorded that Section 15 of the Police Act, 1861 authorized the State Government to declare any area under its jurisdiction to be in a disturbed or dangerous condition, or to find that, because of the conduct of the inhabitants or of any particular class or section among them, it was advisable to increase the number of police officers. Once such a declaration was made, the provision permitted the Inspector‑General of Police, or any other officer authorized by the State Government for that purpose and with the Government’s sanction, to employ a police force in addition to the ordinary fixed complement that was normally quartered in the area specified by the proclamation. The section further stipulated that, subject to the provisions of sub‑section 5, the expense of this additional police force was to be borne by the inhabitants of the area described in the proclamation. The law required the district magistrate, after conducting any inquiry he deemed necessary, to apportion that cost among those inhabitants who were liable to bear it and who were not exempted under the succeeding sub‑section. The magistrate was to make the apportionment based on his judgment of the relative means of the various inhabitants within the area. Sub‑section 5 empowered the State Government, by order, to exempt any persons or any class or section of the inhabitants from liability to bear any portion of the cost. Sub‑section 6 was noted as omitted because it was not relevant to the matters before the Court.

The Court then reproduced the notification that invoked the foregoing provisions and that was the subject of the present challenge. The notification began by stating that the Rajpramukh was satisfied that the area shown in the annexed schedule had been found to be in a disturbed and dangerous state. Accordingly, exercising the authority conferred on him by Section 15(1) of the Police Act, the Rajpramukh declared that the twenty‑four villages listed in the schedule would be deemed disturbed for a period of six months from the date of the notification. By reference to sub‑section 2 of Section 15, the Rajpramukh authorised the Inspector‑General of Police to employ, at the cost of the inhabitants of the declared area, any police force in addition to the ordinary fixed complement quartered therein. Further, invoking sub‑section 5 of the same section, the Rajpramukh expressly exempted the Harijan and Muslim inhabitants of those villages from any liability to bear a share of the cost incurred for posting the additional police force. The names of the twenty‑four villages were then listed. The respondent, Thakur Pratap Singh, who resided in Baragaon—one of the villages named—filed an application before the High Court of Rajasthan seeking a writ or direction under Article 226 of the Constitution. He challenged the validity of Section 15 of the Police Act, particularly sub‑section 5 and the notification, and prayed for appropriate relief. The High Court dismissed the broader contention that Section 15 of the Police Act was invalid in its entirety.

The Court observed that the State Government possessed authority to order the exemption of “any person or classes or sections of such inhabitants” from the obligation to bear the cost of an additional police force. However, the Court held that paragraph 4 of the notification, which exempted “Harijan and Muslim inhabitants of the villages” from the levy, contravened the guarantee contained in Article 15(1) of the Constitution. Article 15(1) declares that “The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.” Accordingly, the Court declared the exemption provision unconstitutional and struck it down. The State of Rajasthan, displeased with that determination, applied to the High Court for a certificate under Article 132(1) to obtain leave to appeal to this Court, and the certificate was granted, bringing the present appeal before the Court. Counsel for the State endeavoured vigorously to argue that the exemption of the Harijan and Muslim inhabitants was not founded solely upon the categories enumerated in Article 15(1), but rather on the premise that members of those two communities had been identified by the State as not having engaged in conduct that warranted the stationing of the additional police force. The same argument had been presented before the High Court and had been rejected by the learned Judges, who remarked that the contention was “a very strange argument that only persons of a certain community or caste were law‑abiding citizens, while the members of other communities were not. Disturbing elements may be found among members of any community or religion just as much as there may be saner elements among members of that community or religion.” The Court agreed with that assessment, stating that even if the majority—or even all—of the members of the exempted communities were law‑abiding, the State had not shown that no peaceful and law‑abiding persons existed among the other communities in the twenty‑four villages on whom the punitive levy was imposed. In paragraph 5(f) of the petition before the High Court, the respondent had averred that “the aforesaid Notification is ultra vires of the Constitution of India as it discriminates amongst the Citizens of a village on the basis of religion, race or caste, in as much as it makes a distinction between persons professing the Mohammadan religion and others and also between persons who are Muslims and Harijans by caste and the rest. It, therefore, contravenes the provisions of Article 15 of the Constitution of India.” The State’s answer was that “The Harijan and Muslim inhabitants of these villages have been exempted.”

The State argued that the exemption from liability to bear any portion of the cost of the additional force was not based on the religion, race or caste of the persons concerned but because those persons had been found to be peace‑loving and law‑abiding citizens, and that in the twenty‑four villages the additional force had been posted on that basis. The Court observed that even at the stage of the petition before the High Court the State had not contended that there were no persons belonging to the other communities who were peace‑loving and law‑abiding, although the State might have maintained that a great majority of those other communities were inclined otherwise. Consequently, the notification was held to have discriminated against the law‑abiding members of the other communities and to have favoured the Muslim and Harijan communities, assuming that every member of those two groups was “peace‑loving and law‑abiding”, on the ground of caste or religion alone. The Court noted that if any other grounds for the exemption had existed, the State ought to have specified them in the notification. It was therefore plain that the notification conflicted directly with the provisions of Article 15(1) of the Constitution, and that paragraph 4 of the notification had been condemned as violating that specific constitutional prohibition. In the Court’s opinion, the learned judges of the High Court were right to strike down that paragraph of the notification. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed. Because the respondent did not appear, the Court made no order as to costs, and the appeal was discharged.