The Calcutta Weekly Notes. Monday June 12 1939

788) where their Lordships disapproved of the action of the majority of the -Judges of the Appellate Bench of the High Court in rferring to “ the proceedings of the Legislture which resulted in the passing of the Act.” On reference to the judgments of the Appellate Court reported in 21 Cal. [...] [Vole VAIL as passed by Parliament to the White Paper and the Report of the Joint Select Comittee means reference to the original intetion of the Government before even the Select Committee had reported and the itention of the small body of men who costituted the Select Committee and had to consider not the Bill as introduced in Parliament but certain earlier and tentative proposals. [...] What warrant can there be for supposing that the intention of the Legislature was the same as the intention of the Select Comittee as expressed in its report or that when the Act was passed the members of the Select Committee supported it with the same intention and for the same reasons? [...] The very obscurity of the language of the statute which necessitates a reference to extraneous matters shows that it may cover different intentions and it may well have been even where the language in the statute and the report of the Select Committee is the same that though the majority of the Legislature retained the language of the Select Committee they adopted it to epresa different i [...] Although it may be a matter of common knowledge to the British statesmen of the day that the genesis of the Reforms began with the Despatch of the Government of India of the end of 1916 yet the Court is precluded from making any reference to the contents of this Depatch which constituted the pledge to the people of India and which preceded the Montague declaration.