This Act may be called the King of Oudh’s Estate Validation Act, 1917.
Notwithstanding anything contained in any enactment or any rule of law to the contrary, the three deeds of conveyance and the trust deed, copies of which are set out in the Schedule, and all acts and things done under the said deeds are, save as is hereinafter provided, validated and confirmed:
Provided that, with effect from the 1st of January 1914, the said trust deed shall be construed as if no reference has been made therein to the share of rupees two hundred thousand of the said Government Promissory Note, and as if the sum of rupees thirteen thousand six hundred and thirty-four has been mentioned in the twelfth recital thereof instead of the sum of rupees sixteen thousand, and the sum of rupees four hundred thousand instead of the sum of rupees six hundred thousand, and with such further alterations and modifications as this construction may require.
The sum of rupees seventy-seven thousand eight hundred and fifty-six shall be released from the trusts of the said trust deed, and shall be paid from the surplus monies of the said Sibtainabad Endowment Fund to such officer as the Governor General in Council may appoint, and shall be distributed in the manner hereinafter provided.
The sum referred to in section 3 and any further sums which the Governor General in Council may at any time declare to be surplus monies of the Sibtainabad Endowment Fund as he is hereby empowered to do, and all sums payable in respect of interest on the said share of the said Government Promissory Note accrued due since the 1st of January 1914, or hereafter to accrue due from time to time in respect thereof, are hereby declared to be pensions, and the said share of the said note is hereby declared to be a grant of money within the meaning of the Pensions Act, 1871 (XXIII of 1871), and that Act shall apply to such sums as if they were pensions of the classes referred to in sections 4 and 11 of the said Act and to the said share as if it was a grant of the class referred to in section 4 of the said Act, subject, however, to the following modifications, namely: --
(i) any claim under section 5 of the said Act as applied shall be preferred to such officer as the Local Government may authorize in this behalf;
(ii) the power of commutation conferred by section 10 of the said Act shall be exercisable without the consent of the holder where the payment to be made is at a rate less than a rate of rupee one per month; and
(iii) the power to make rules conferred by sections 5 and 14 of the said Act shall extend to a power to make rules prescribing the persons or classes of persons to whom, and the principles on which, all distributions under this Act shall be made.