JUDGMENT
M.S. Deshpande, J.
1. By this petition, the petitioner seeks a writ under Article 226 of the Constitution for striking down the provisions of Clause 21-A of the C.P. & Berar Letting of Houses and Rent Control Order, 1949 for short, “the Rent Control Order”), and the notification dated May 7, 1984, issued by the respondent No. 4 investing the Deputy Collector and special Land Acquisition Officer (General), Akola, with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21 of the Rent Control Order, and directing the Collector to hear the appeal filed by the respondent No. 1 against the order passed by the Rent Controller under Clauses 13(3)(vi) & (vii) of the Rent Control Order.
2. The petitioner is the tenant of the respondent No. 1 at Rs. 50/- per month in a house situated in old Bhaji Bazar at Akola. Respondent No. 1 filed an application under Clause 13(3)(vi) & (vii) of the Rent Control order before the Rent Controller. The application was opposed by the petitioner and came to be dismissed. Respondent No. 1 preferred an appeal to the Collector, which came to be transferred to the Resident deputy Collector. The original application was decided by Shri K.G. Bijwal, a Deputy Collector, in his capacity as the Rent Controller; but by the time the appeal filed by respondent No. 1 came up for hearing, Shri Bijwal came to be appointed as Resident Deputy Collector, who, under a notification dated 13th June, 1966, was invested with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21-A of the Rent Control Order. Since Shri Bijwal could not have heard appeal from the orders passed by him as Rent Controller, by a notification, dated May 7, 1984, the Deputy Collector and Special Land Acquisition Officer (General), Akola, was invested with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21 for hearing appeals against the orders passed by Shri Bijwal, Deputy Collector. The petitioner’s grievance is that Shri Paraskar (respondent No. 2), the Special Land Acquisition Officer (General) and Deputy Collector was an officer junior to Shri Bijwal and was, therefore, not competent to hear appeals from the orders passed by Shri Bijwal. Further, it is urged that another officer could be invested with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21-A(1), since the Resident Deputy Collector had already been invested with the powers under Clause 21 to hear the appeal. In any event there was an excessive delegation of the powers under Clause 21-A to the State Government and the Collector to have the appeals heard by any officer. This power was unbriddled and vague and, therefore, the notification appointing the respondent No. 2 as a Collector for the purpose of hearing the appeals from the orders passed by Shri Bijwal was unconstitutional.
3. The respondents denied that Shri Bijwal was senior to the Land Acquisition Officer and Deputy Collector and that the latter could not be invested with the powers to hear appeals from the orders passed by Shri Bijwal as Rent Controller. They refute the challenges raised by the petitioner in the petition.
4. The C.P. & Berar Letting of Houses and Rent Control Order, 1949 has been made by the Government in exercise of the powers vested in it by section 2 of the C.P. & Berar Regulation of Letting of Accommodation Act, 1946 (Act. No. XI of 1946). Clause 21 and 21-A are as follows:-
“21. (1) Any person aggrieved by an order of the controller may, within fifteen days from the date on which the order is communicated to him, present an appeal in writing to the Collector of the district :
Provided that in computing the period prescribed above, the time properly taken in obtaining as copy of the order complained of shall be excluded :
(1-a) Every petition for appeal shall be accompanied by a certified copy of the order to which objection is made unless the authority to which the petition is made, dispenses with its production.
(2) The collector shall then sent for the record of the case from the Controller and, after perusing such record and making such further enquiry as he may think fit, either personally or through the Controller, shall decide the appeal.
(2-a) The Collector may, either on his own motion at any time or on the application of any party interested made within ninety days of the passing of an order, review any order passed by himself or any of his predecessors in-office and pass such order in reference there to as he-thinks fit so however that no order shall be varied or reversed unless notice has been given to the parties interested to appear and be heard in support of such order.
(3) The decision of the Collector, and subject only to such decision, an order of the Controller shall be final and no further appeal or revision or application for review shall lie from such decision to any authority whatsoever.
21-A (1) The State Government may by notification invest any officer with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21.
(2) The Collector may transfer any appeal to such officer for disposal, and his decision shall have effect as if the case had been decided by the Collector.”
5. Under Clause 21(1) of the Rent Control Order, “Controller” means an officer appointed to exercise the powers of a Controller under this Act, under Clause 3, for any area within his jurisdiction to which Chapter-II is extended, the Collector shall appoint an officer, being a Gazetted Officer, to be a Controller. Clause 29 provided that the Collector may, by order, empower any officer subordinate to him not below the rank of Extra-Assistant Commissioner (which is equivalent to Deputy Collector) to exercise any power conferred on him under Clauses 23, 24, 24-A, 25 and 28 in such circumstances and under such conditions, if any, as may be specified in the order. It is not disputed that no officer other than the one holding the rank of a Deputy Collector has been appointed either as Rent Controller or has been invested with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21-A. The challenge is restricted to the investing any other officers, besides the Collector himself, with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21.
6. The first submission of Shri Lohiya, the learned Counsel for the petitioner, was that Shri Bijwal, who was the Rent Controller who decided the respondent No. 1’s application under clause 13(3)(vi) & (vii) of the Rent Control Order, was senior to Shri Paraskar who was working as Deputy Collector and Special Land Acquisition Officer, the latter being the authority designated by virtue of his office under a notification dated May 7, 1984, to hear the appeal from the orders passed by Shri Bijwal. This position is disputed by the respondents in their returns. It is urged by the respondents that Shri Paraskar was a Senior Deputy Collector and was competent to hear the appeals from the orders passed by Shri Bijwal.
7. It seems to us that since both the officers belonged to the cadre of Deputy Collector, which was next below that of the Collector, and any officer, who was to be invested with the powers of a Collector has inevitably to come from the cadre of Deputy Collectors, it may not always be possible to have another Deputy Collector in the district who would be senior to the person who was working as the Controller. The power to hear the appeals is not derived from the seniority of a particular officer but by the conferral of the powers to hear appeals under a particular statute. Shri Lohiya referred to the observations of this Court in Bai Mangu v. Bharathan Cotton Mills Co. Ltd., A.I.R 1982 Bombay 90; but there is nothing in that case which would support his contention regarding the seniority of a particular officer being the criterion for being appointed as an appellate authority. In Warton’s Law Lexicon, Edition 13, “Appeal” is defined as the judicial examination of the decision by a higher Court of the decision of an inferior Court. According to Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary, Vol. 1, page 98, “an appeal is the right of entering a superior Court and invoking its aid and interposition to redress the error of the Court below”. In Tukaram v. Radhabai, A.I.R. 1954 Nagpur 56, it was said that an appeal is the removal of the cause from an inferior Court to the superior Court for the purpose of testing the soundness of the decision of that Court. If the appointing authority is satisfied that the person, who is to be invested with the authority to hear the appeals, has the requisite qualifications for performing those duties, then it is immaterial whether one or the order officer is senior or junior, and the challenge on this ground would not stand.
8. The next contention on behalf of the petitioner was that section 21-A is vague and gives an uncanalised power to the State Government to invest any officer with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21. Now, it must be noted that the power under sub-clause (1) of Clause 21-A is retained by the State Government to itself, though the power of appointment of the controller is delegated under Clause 3 to the Collector by specifying the class from which such an appointment will be made by the Collector. Since there is only one Collector for the district, as we have already indicated, the power of hearing the appeals of necessity would have to be conferred on a Deputy Collector. This power of choosing is not delegated to the Collector who is normally the appellate authority but is reserved to the State Government as the appellate powers would be similar to the powers exercised by the Collector himself. All that the Collector has been authorised by Clause 2 is to transfer any appeal to such officer who has been invested with the power of a Collector, for disposal, and his decision shall have the same effect as if the case had been decided by the Collector. Having regard to these provisions, there is no vagueness about the rank of the officer who is to be invested with the powers of the Collector and the provisions are not open to the criticism that uncanalised powers and conferred on the State Government of the Collector. Sub-clause (2) of Clause 21-A in no unmistakable terms defines the authorities to which the appeals have to be transferred and the authority is the one created by the State Government. The Supreme Court, while considering the provisions of the Assam Revenue Tribunal (Transfer of Powers) Act (4 of 1948) observed in Assam State v. Sristikar, that by section 3(3) of that Act, the legislature itself constituted the authority and only left it to the Provincial Government to appoint persons to man (sic) that authority and to perform the duties of the authority, and that appeared to be the usual practice of Indian legislatures to constitute authorities in that manner. Reference was made to as many as fifteen enactments in which such a course was adopted. The Rent Control Order is a piece of delegated legislation and the test as pointed out in Avinder Singh v. State of Punjab, is :-
“Where the legislative policy is enunciated with sufficient clearness or a standard is laid down, the courts should not interfere. What guidance should be given and to what extent and whether guidance has been given in a particular case at all depends on a consideration of the provisions of the particular Act with which the Court has to deal including its preamble.”
We find that there is sufficient guidance in the Rent Control Order, 1949, about the class of officers from amongst whom the officer is to be selected for being conferred with the Appellate Authority, and the provisions cannot be said to be vague, nor can the power conferred be described as uncanalised or unbridled. It does not also suffer from the vice of excessive delegation.
9. With regard to the contention that since under the notification dated 13th June, 1966, all Resident Deputy Collectors were conferred with the powers of a Collector under Clause 21 of the Rent Control Order, 1949, within the limits of their respective districts, the power of the State Government in the matter of investing another officer with the powers of the Collector, had been exhausted, we find that there is no limitation on the number of officers who may be invested with the powers of the Collector. There is also no limitation on the powers of the Collector to transfer an appeal and to recall it and retransfer it to another officer for disposal, under sub-clause (2) of Clause 21-A. No exception can, therefore, be taken to the notification dated June 13, 1966 and May 7, 1984, nor is there any justification for asking the Collector to hear the respondent No. 1’s appeal himself.
10. In the result, we see no merit in this writ petition. The rule is discharged. The petitioner will pay the costs of the respondent No. 1 and respondent Nos. 2 to 4 together in different sets.