P L D 1952 Lahore 426 (PLP)

(b) Any person aggrieved by an order passed by the Con troller may, within fifteen days from the date of such order or such longer period as the appellate authority may allow for reasons to be recorded in writing, prefer an appeal in writing to the appellate authority having jurisdiction. (2) On such appeal being preferred, the appellate authority may order stay of further proceedings in' the matter pending decision on the appeal. (3) The appellate authority shall decide the appeal after sending for the records of the case from the Controller and after giving the parties an opportunity of being heard and, if necessary, after making such further enquiry as it thinks fit either personally or through the Controller. (4) The decision of the appellate authority and subject only to such decision, an order of the Controller shall be final and shall not be liable to be called in question in any Court of law whether in a suit or other proceedings by way of appeal or revision." It was held by a Division Bench of this Court that the powers given to this Court to revise orders of all Courts subordinate to it had not been taken away by the above section and a revision petition lay to this Court, but a Full Bench of this Court held in Corporation of the City of Lahore v. Mst. Fahmida Begum, Civil Revision No. 141 of 1950. decided on the 29th of January 1952 (1952 Pakistan Law Reports 227)=(P L D 1952 Lah. 258) that because of sub section (4) of section 15 of the Punjab Act XXIII of 1949, no revision was competent. In the beginning of 1952, the Punjab Legislative Assembly passed the Punjab Urban Rent Restriction (Amendment) Act, 1952 (Punjab Act XVI of 1952), by which subsection (3‑A) was inserted in section 15 and some consequential altera tions were made in subsection (4). The newly inserted subsection reads as follows:‑ " Any person aggrieved by an order passed on appeal by the appellate authority appointed by Government under clause (a) of subsection (1), and if an appellate authority has not been appointed in respect of any area or classes of cases, any person aggrieved by the order of the Controller may, within 30 days from the date of the order by the appellate authority or as the case may be, by the Controller, prefer a revision in writing to the High Court which shall be preferred and decided as if it were a revision under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908." The assent to Act XVI of 1952 was given by the Governor of the Punjab on the 31st of January 1952, and a notification dated the 5th February 1952, to that effect was published in the Punjab Gazette (Extraordinary) dated the 6th of February 1952. The learned counsel for the petitioner urged that as the assent of the Governor of the Punjab to Punjab Act XVI of 1952, was given on the 31st of January 1952, subsection (3‑A) was applicable to the present case and the revision petition was competent. This argument assumed that an Act passed by the Provincial Legislature comes into force as soon as the requisite assent thereto is given, but this matter is governed by section 3 of the Punjab General Clauses Act, which reads as follows :‑ " Where any Punjab Act is not expressed to come into operation on a particular day, then it shall come into opera tion if it is an Act of the Legislature, on the day on which the assent thereto of the Governor." " Governor, the Governor‑General, or His Majesty, as the case may require, is first published in the Official Gazette, and if it is an Act of the Governor, on the day on which it is first published as an Act in the Official Gazette and in every such Act the date of the first publication thereof shall be printed either above or below the title of the Act and shall form part of every such Act." 5th of February 1952, is mentioned in gazette in accordance with section 3 of the Punjab General Clauses Act and it must, therefore, be held that the amending Act did not come into force till the 5th of February 1952. It was next urged by the learned counsel for the petitioner that the present petition having been instituted at a time when a revision petition against the order of the appellate authorities was competent, it cannot be held to be incompetent simply because it was against an order which was not open to revision at the time when it was passed. The learned counsel for the petitioner cited no authorities in support of his contention and in my view the contention has no force. At the time when the order sought to be revised was passed on the 31st of January 1952, it was, because of the state of the law then in force, a final order not open to question by any proceedings and the mere fact that at the time when the revision petition was instituted the law in force allowed such a petition cannot make the order open to question in revision Statutes dealing with matters of procedure may be presumed to be re trospective, but those which touch rights must be expressed to be so if they are to have a retrospective operation. Applying that incontrovertible principle to the facts of the present case, we find that on the 31st of January 1952 the respondent had obtained an order which was not assailable and as he had been vested with a right to what was given to him by that order the subsequent change in law if is to deprive him of that right must be clearly expressed to be restrospective. In this connection I may refer to a decision of their Lord ships of the Privy Council in Delhi Cloth and General Mills Company v. Income‑tax Commissioner, Delhi (1927) I L R IX Lah. 284 which has relevancy. The material facts in that case were that on the 1st April 1926 by the Indian Income -tax (Amendment) Act, 1926, an appeal to His Majesty in Council was provided for from any judgment of the High Court on a reference made under section 66 of the Indian Income‑tax Act, 1922, if the High Court certified the case to be a fit one for appeal to His Majesty in Council and the question for consideration was whether an appeal could lie to His Majesty in Council from an order of the High Court passed before the 1st of April 1926. Dealing with the ques tion, their Lordships of the Privy Council are reported at page 290 of the report to have said as follows :‑ "The principle which their Lordships must apply in deal ing with this matter has been authoritatively enunciated by the Board in the Colonial Sugar Refining Company v. Irving (1905 Appeal Cases 369), where it is in effect laid down that, while provisions of a statute dealing merely with matters of procedure may, properly, unless that construction be textually inadmissible, have retrospective effect attribut ed to them, provisions which touch a right in existence at the passing of the statute are not to .be applied retrospec tively in the absence of express enactment or necessary intendment. Their Lordships can have no doubt that provisions which, if applied retrospectively, would deprive of their existing finality orders which, when the statute came into force, were final, are provisions which touch existing rights. Accordingly, if the section now in question is to apply to orders final at the date when it came into force, it must be clearly so provided. Their Lordships cannot find in the section even an indication to that effect. On the contrary, they think there is clear suggestion that a judgment of the High Court referred to in subsection (2) is one which under subsection (1) has been pronounced by "not less than two judges of the High Court," a condi tion which was not itself operative until the entire section came into force." No doubt their Lordships of the Privy Council were dealing with a provision of law which had granted a right of appeal after the order sought to be appealed was passed while the case before me is one of granting a right of revision, but in principle there is, in my view, no difference between the two cases because it is the finality of the order and not the remedy which is the material factor in the case. In view of what I have stated above, I hold that the order of the appellate authority passed on the 31st of January 1952, became final and no revision lies against it. The petition for revision is dismissed, but in the circumstances of the case, I leave the parties to bear their own costs. A. H. Petition dismissed.