Answer 1.

A statute is an edict of the Legislature and the conventional way of interpreting or construing
a statute is to seek the intention of its makers. The duty of the Judicature is to act upon the
true intention of the Legislature ‘sententia legis’. In the case of Bharat Aluminium
Company v. Kaiser Aluminium Technical Services Inc., (2012) 9 SCC 552, the Supreme
Court of India stated in its judgement that if a statutory provision is open to more than one
interpretation the court has to choose that interpretation which represents the true intention of
the Legislature. There maybe difficulties which can arise because of many reasons such as
words in any language are not scientific symbols having any precise or definite meaning, and
language is nothing but an imperfect medium to convey one’s thought, much less of a large
assembly consisting of persons of various shades of opinions. It is nearly impossible even for
the most imaginative Legislature to forestall exhaustive situations and circumstances that may
emerge after enacting a statue where its application maybe called for. The function of court is
only to expound and not to legislate. The problem of interpretation is a problem of meaning of
words and their effectiveness as a medium of expression to communicate a particular thought.
A words is used to refer to some object or situation in the real world and this object or
situation has been assigned a technical name referent. Words and phrases are symbols that
stimulate mental references to referents. But words of any language are capable of reffering to
different referents in different contexts and times. Also there are chances that some cases fall
on the borderline which can be within or outsiden the connotation of a word. In ordinary
conversation or correspondence language is generally open for the parties to obtain
clarification if the referent is imperfectly communicated. The position is different in
Interpretation of statute law, a statute as enacted cannot be explained by the individual
opinions of the legislature, not even by a resolution of the entire legislature. After the statute
is enacted the Legislature becomes functus officio so far as that particular statute is concerned,
so that it cannot itself interpret it. The legislature can no doubt amend or repeal any previous
statute or can declare its meaning but all this can be done only by a fresh statute after going
through the normal process of law making, this was also stated in the case of State of
Jharkhand v. Govind Singh, AIR 2005 SC 204.
The Privy Council in the case of Crawford v. Spooner, (1846) 6 Moore PC 1, stated that
“We cannot aid the legislature’s defective phrasing of an Act, we cannot add or mend and, by
construction make up deficiencies which are left there”.It is against the rule of construction to
read words into an Act unless it is absolutely necessary and in the same way it is wrong and
dangerous to proceed by substituting some words for words of the statute. In the case of

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British India General Insurance Co. Ltd v. Captain Itbar Singh, AIR 1959 SC 1331, the
Supreme Court while holding that section 96(2) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1939, is
exhaustive of defences open to an insurer, the court refused to ass word ‘also’ after the words
‘on any of the following grounds’ and observed: “This, rule of interpretation, do not permit us
to do unless the section as it stands is meaningless or of doubtful meaning”.
Similarly in the case of Sri Ram Ramnarain v. State of Bombay, AIR 1959 SC 459 the
Supreme Court while construing Article 31-A(i)(a) of the Constitution and in holding that the
‘extinguishment or modification’ of any right in any estate is a distinct concept from the
‘acquisition by the State of any estate or of any rights therein’, the Court rejected the
argument that the extinguishment or modification of any such rights therein, as it necessitated
reading the words ‘in process of such acquisition’, which are not there, after the words
‘extinguishment or modification of any such rights’.
Causus omissus is an application of the same principle that a matter which should have been,
but has not been provided for in a statue cannot be supplied by courts, as to do so will be
legislation and not construction and the same was established in the case of Karnataka State
Financial Corporation v. N. Narasimahaiah, (2008) 5 SCC 176. This can be seen in the
case of Sree Balaji Nagar Residential Association v. State of Tamil Nadu & Ors., (2015)
3 SCC 353, the Supreme Court analysed section 24(2) of the Right to Fair Compensation and
Transperency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, provides that
where an award under section 11 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, has been made five years
or more prior to the commencement of the 2013 Act, but physical possession of the land has
not been taken or the compensation has not been paid, the land acquisition proceedings under
the 1894 Act shall be deemed to have lapsed. The Court held that the legislature has
consciously omitted to extend the period of five years indicated in section 24(2) of the Act,
even if the acquisition proceedings were delayed on account of an order of stay or injunction
granted by the court if law or for any other reason and this omission cannot be supplied by a
Court of Law.
In the case of Seaford Court Estates Ltd. v. Asher, (1949) 2 All ER 155, the court stated
that “When a defect appears a judge cannot simply fold his hands and blame the draftsman.
He must set to work on the constructive task of finding the intention of Parliament and then he
must supplement the written words so as to give ‘force and life’ to the intention of the
legislature. A judge should ask himself the question how, if the makers of the Act had
themselves come across this ruck in the texture of it, they would have straightened it out? He

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must then do as they would have done. A judge must not alter the materials of which the Act is
woven, but he can and should iron out the creases”.
When the question arises as to the meaning of a certain provision in the statute it is not only
legitimate but proper to read that provision in its context. The context here means the statute
as a whole, the previous state of the law, other statutes in pari materia, the general scope of
the statute and the mischief that it was intended to remedy. This rule was adopted by the
Supreme Court in the case of Union of India v. Elphinstone Spinning and Weaving Co.
Ltd., 2001 (1) JT SC 536. It is a rule now firmly established that the legislature must be
found by reading the statute as a whole. It is called as construction ‘ex visceribus actus’. It is
the most natural and genuine exposition of a statue was laid down by Lord Coke and was
quoted with approval in Punjab Beverages Pvt. Ltd. v. Suresh Chand, AIR 1978 SC 995
that “to construe one part of a statute by another part of the same statute, for the best
expresseth the meaning of the makers”. In the case of State of West Bengal v. Union of
India, CJI Sinha stated that “The Court must ascertain the intention of the legislature by
directing its attention not merely to the clauses to be construed but to the entire statute, it
must compare the clause with the other parts of the law, and the setting in which the clause to
be interpreted occurs”.
The rule is of general application as even the plainest terms may be controlled by the context,
and it is conceivable as the legislature while enacting one clause in plain terms, might
introduce into the same statute other enactments which to some extent qualify or neutralise its
effect. The same word may mean one thing in one context and another in a different context.
For this reason the same word used in different sections of a statute or even when used at
different places in the same clause or section of a statute may bear different meanings. The
conclusion that the language used by the legislature is plain or ambiguous can only be truly
arrived at by studying the statute as a whole. How far and to what extent each component part
of the statute influences the meaning of the other part would be different in each given case.
But the effect of the application of the rules to a particular case should not be confounded
with the legitimacy of applying it. The High Court of Australia in the case of CIC Insurance
Ltd. v. Bankstown Football Club Ltd. (1997) 187 CLR 384 rightly pointed out that the
modern approach to statutory interpretation insists that the context be considered in the first
instance, not merely at some later stage when ambiguity might be thought to arise and uses
context in its widest sense to include such things as the existing state of the law and the
mischief which, by legitimate means, one may discern the statute was intended to remedy.

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The modern concept of context may in cases, when the language is borrowed from earlier
legislation and judicial decisions, encompass the entire historical background of the statutory
provision. While interpreting section 8 of the Punjab Tenancy Act, 1887, the Supreme Court
in the case of Tara Chand & Ors v. Gram Panchayat, Jhupa Khurd & Ors., (2012) 13
SCC 269, held that the phrase ‘any person’ should genrally be given the wildest possible
import unless the statutory provisions suggest that the legislature itself has intended to give a
restricted meaning to the phrase. Section 8 of the Act provides that nothing shall preclude
‘any person’ from establishing a right of occupancy on any ground other than grounds
specified in the foregoing sections of the Chapter. Section 5 of the Act recognises the right of
occupancy of ‘tenants’. Section 10 of the Act states that no one of several ‘joint owners’ of
land shall acquire a right of occupancy therein in the absence of a custom to the contrary. The
Court held, reading section 8 in the context of sections 5 and 10, and giving effect to the
purpose of the Act, that the expression ‘any person’ will mean a ‘tenant’, and not a ‘joint
owner’ of a land or a hissedar.