CORPORATION OF CALCUTTA Vs. LIBERTY CINEMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Sarkar J. (with him Raghubar Dayal and Mudholkar JJ. ) : The appellant Corporation was constituted by the Calcutta Municipal Act, 1951, an Act passed by the Legislature of the State of West Bengal. The act was intended to consolidate and amend the law relating to the Municipal affairs of Calcutta and it defined the duties, powers and functions of the Corporation in whose charge those affairs were placed. The respondent is a firm owning a cinema house and carrying on business of public cinema shows.

(2.) Section 443 of the Act provides that no person shall without a licence granted by the Corporation keep open any cinema-house for public amusement. It, however, does not say that any fee is to be paid for the licence. But sub-section (2) of S. 548 says that for every licence under the Act, a fee may, unless otherwise provided, be charged at such rate as may from time to time be provided. In 1948 the Corporation had fixed the scale of fees on the basis of the annual valuation of the cinemahouses made by a method which does not appear on the record. The respondent had under these sections obtained a licence for its cinema house and had been paying a licence fee calculated on the aforesaid basis. The fee so calculated was Rs. 400. 00 per year.

(3.) By a resolution passed on 14/03/1958 the Corporation changed the basis of assessment of the licence fee with effect from 1/04/1958. Under the new method the fee was to be assessed at rates prescribed per show according to the sanctioned seating capacity of the cinema houses. The respondent's cinema house had 551 seats and under the changed method it became liable to a fee of Rs. 5 / - per show. In the result it became liable to pay a fee of Rs. 6,000/ - per year.