Shinde, J. - (1.)THE applicant Kailashnath filed a suit for the determination of fair rent in the court of the Civil Judge, Gwalior, under Sub -section (4) of Section 5 of the Accommodation Control Ordinance Samvat 2004. During the pendency of the suit Sthan Niyantran Vidhan Section 2006 came into force on the 9th of February, 1950. The trial Court holding that as Sthan Niyantran Vidhan has come into force it has no jurisdiction to try the suit, returned the plaint under Order VII Rule 10. The District Judge held that the order of the trial Court viewed in the light of Section 10 of the Sthan Niyantran Vidhan is correct. The Plaintiff being aggrieved by the decision of the District Judge has filed this revision.
(2.)THE present suit for the determination of lair rent was filed on 2 -5 -1949. Sthan Niyantran Vidhan came into force on 9th February, 1950. So there is no doubt that at the time when the suit was instituted it was governed by the provisions of Accommodation Control Ordinance Samvat 2004. The question for consideration is whether the jurisdiction of the civil Judge to try a suit filed during the life time of the Accommodation Control Ordinance has been ousted by Sthan Niyantran Vidhan Samvat 2006.
It is a fundamental rule of the construction of statute that no statute except one dealing with the procedure is to be construed to have retrospective operation unless such a construction appears very clearly in the terms of the Act or raised by necessary and distinct implication. (Vide Maxwell on Interpretation of Statutes 9th Edition P. 221). Enactments dealing with procedure are always retrospective in the sense that their provisions will apply to proceedings already commenced at the time of their enactments. The reason for this is that ho person has a vested right in any course of procedure; but where some of the provisions of the enactment of procedure do affect vested rights whether substantive or remedial, rule against retrospective operation of statute will apply, unless there is an indication to the contrary in the Act. This principle is now so well established that it is hardly necessary to support it by any authorities. I shall, however, content myself with quoting only one authority, which is a recent case of the Bombay High Court. In C.P. Bannerjee v. B.S. Irani : AIR 1949 Bom 182, the facts were briefly as follows. Plaintiff filed a suit on 12th September, 1947 to recover a sum of Rs. 1000/ -; Under Section 21 of the Presidency Small Cause Courts Act, as it then stood, the Plaintiff had the election to institute the suit in the High Court. In about May 1948 the Bombay Legislature "enacted Act No. 44 of 1948 called the Presidency Small Causes Courts (Bombay Amendment) Act and by Section 2 thereof the election which was given to the Plaintiff to file a suit in the High Court was deleted. The Bombay legislature also simultaneously enacted Bombay -Act No. 41 of 1948 called the Bombay High Court Letters Patent Amendment Act. By Section 3 amendment was made in Clause 12 of the Letters Patent of the High Court. The amendment read as follows:

Except that the said High Court shall not have such" original jurisdiction in cases falling within the jurisdiction of the Small Cause Court at Bombay, or the Bombay City Civil Court.

(3.)THE question for consideration before the Bombay High Court was whether it had further jurisdiction to try and determine the cases even though the suit was rightly received and entertained at the date when the same was instituted. In the course of the judgment Bhagwati J. made some important observations on the law relating to the subject matter of jurisdiction. As these observations have a very great bearing on this, case, I propose to quote his observations in extenso:
Normally it would not have a retrospective operation. It has been laid down as a fundamental rule of the English law, which we have been following here, that no statute shall be construed to have a retrospective operation unless such a construction appears very clearly in the terms of the Act or arises by necessary and distinct implication. There is no doubt that so far as the statutes are concerned, a distinction is broadly made between procedural statutes and statutes which affect the substantive rights of the parties. There is no vested right which a subject has in. regard to procedure. But with regard to the jurisdiction of the Court in which he has a right to institute proceedings a subject can have a vested right. That this is so is amply borne out by authorities and I shall only content myself with quoting one of them, which is an authority of the Federal Court, a judgment of Varadachariar J. reported in 'Venugopala v. Krishnaswami : AIR 1943 F. C. 24 and the passage at P., 27 Col. 1, thereof:

It will be noticed that in that case the Judiciary Act was passed during the pendency of the action in the Court of first instance and their Lordship's decision recognised that, from the date of the initiation of the action, the suitor had a right of appeal to a superior tribunal according to the state of the law, as it stood at the time of the commencement of the proceeding. This necessarily involves the recognition of an equally valuable right that the proceedings should in due course be tried and disposed of by the tribunal before which it had been commenced. This principle that a statute should not be so interpreted as to take away an action which has been well commenced has been affirmed in various cases in differing circumstances. In 'Marsh v. Higgins', 1850 9 C. B. 551 it was observed by Wilde C. J. that it must have been well known to both branches of the legislature that strong and distinct words would be necessary to defeat a vested right to continue an action which has been well commenced.

These observations of the Federal Court are enough to show that where an action has been rightly instituted in a court which had jurisdiction to entertain it, would require strong and district words to defeat such vested right which has accrued to the litigant.