Sir Abdur Rahim, J. — In this case, the Taluk Board of Bandar appeals against the decree of the lower courts, by which it has been restrained from filling up three tanks belonging to the respondent, the Zamindar of Challapalli. The Board purported to act under Sect. 100 of the Madras Act V of 1884 by which “The Taluk Board may, by notice, require the owner of any tank or well to cleanse, fence, repair, or fill it up, if, “on inspection, it appears likely to be dangerous, or prove injurious, to the health of the neighbourhood”. It appears that there were reports of the District Medical and Sanitary Officer before the Board, to the effect that the tanks in question were injurious to the health of the villagers and the president of the Board also inspected the tanks and it may be taken that the Board came to the conclusion that the existence of the tanks in their present condition was injurious to the health of the neighbourhood.

I am prepared to poceed, for the purposes of this judgment, on the assumption that there was sufficient material before the Board on which to found the conclusion as to the present unhealthy and injurious nature of these tanks. The rulings to which we have been referred show that if there were materials before a local authority to come to such a conclusion, it is not for the Civil Courts to inquire into the sufficiency, or otherwise, of those materials. It is for the Board to decide upon the evidence, whether a certain tank is dangerous or injurious to the health of the neighbourhood and when such decision is arrived at, it is not for the Court to interfere with it, on the ground that the Court would have come to a different conclusion. That, I take it, is the effect of the ruling in The Municipal Commissioners for the City of Madras v. Parthasaradi, Duke v. Rameswar Malia, and Patel Panachand v. Ahmedabad Municipality, and to that extent, I have nothing to say as regards the applicability of these decisions to this case. But what the respondent, the zamindar, contends is that the Board has exercised its discretionary power in this case arbitrarily and unreasonably, having regard to the admitted facts and circumstances of the case. The power conferred on the Local Board by Sect. 100 is a very wide power. The Board acting under that section may require the owner of a tank to repair it up, or fill it up, at his own expense; for there is no provision in the Act for the owner being recouped the expenses incurred by him in complying with the provisions of the Act. The Board has the power to acquire the land, if it chooses, by proceedings properly taken, in that connection. But in that case, it would have to make compensation to the owner of the land. There is however no provision for the Board making any compensation to the owner of the property who is called upon to do certain acts under Sect. 100. It is suggested on behalf of the Local Board that the owner of the tank may give up the tank to the Board, if he so chooses and thus save himself the expense of filling it up; that is to say, the owner may be compelled under Sect. 100 indirectly to transfer his property to the Board, without any compensation whatever. That is the only way by which the owner of a tank can save himself according to the argument from what may in some circumstances amount to considerable loss. I should say that in such circumstances the Courts will see that the Taluk Board does not exercise the power conferred on it by Sect. 100 for ulterior purposes. If the board uses its powers for any such purpose, the Civil Court undoubtedly has jurisdiction to restrain the Board from abusing its powers in that manner.

Apart from the question of the Board using its powers for any indirect purpose, it may be safely laid down on the basis of decided cases that where a local authority is invested with discretionary powers, the Court can interfere in cases where such powers are exercised, to use the language of some of the decisions, in a “capricious, wanton and arbitrary” manner, or to adopt the language of some other cases, in an “unreasonable manner.” See Nagar Valab Narsi v. The Municipality of Dhandhuka, and Lalbhai v. The Municipal Commissioner of Bombay. The Indian Courts in this connection have only followed the principles established by the English authorities. See Leader v. Moxton, R. v. Board of Education. Williams v. Giddy, Sutton v. Clarke and Weinberger v. Inglis. So far as this Court is concerned, these principles have been adopted in Somu Pillai…(Plaintiff) v. The Municipal Council, Mayavaram…(Defendant) .*, Mayavaram. To my mind there is no difficulty, therefore, in ascertaining the principle applicable to this class of cases; but difficulty undoubtedly lies in applying the principle to the facts of the particular case. It is not possible to define in an abstract way what would or would not be a reasonable and proper exercise of such a power, as is conferred on the Board by this Act. But when we have the facts of a case before us, the difficulty would not seem to be always very formidable. On the one hand, as has been pointed out in some cases, relied on by the learned pleader for the respondent, as for example Duke v. Rameswar Malia where a local authority is given, the power to decide a certain matter for itself, it is not for the Court to substitute its own judgment for the judgment of the statutory authority. On the other hand, where it is clear that a discretionary power has been exercised in a manner which could not have been in the contemplantion of the legislature, then the Court undoubtedly has jurisdiction to interfere. In this case the Taluk Board seems to have acted without taking into consideration some very important matters in exercising its powers under Sect. 100. First of all, as the deposition of the president of the Taluk Board shows the insanitary condition of the tanks in question is caused mainly, if not entirley, by the discharge into them of the drainage water through channels recently constructed by the Board. The District Munsif accepts this evidence and gives that as one of the reasons for holding that the action of the Board was arbitrary and unreasonable. When the Act gives power to a Taluk Board to require the owner of an insanitary tank to fill it up, the legislature could not have contemplated n case in which the insanitary condition of the tank was caused by the action of the Board itself. In such a case, it might be said that the tank itself was not injurious to the health of the neighbourhood within the meaning of the Act; but that it was made so by the action of the Local Board. The Taluk Board here seems to have built drains, without making any provisions for the proper disposal of the contents of these drains. If it took measures to carry the drainage water to some place other than the tanks, the question of taking any action against the owner of the tanks under the Act would not arise. Then it is obvious that there must be cases in which any direction to fill up the tanks would be prima facie unreasonable and oppressive, having regard to the expense and difficulty of filling them up. The Taluk Board is empowered by Sect. 100 to do either of several things in the interests of the health and safety of the community and if it does not take into consideration any alternative course, that was open to the Board to adopt and which would be more practicable and not entail obvious hardship on the owner of the land, within its jurisdiction the board might well be sail not to have exercised its powers in a reasonable manner. Here.it is quite clear, upon the facts as found by the Lower Courts that by putting up an embankment, round the tank, the object in view would have been accomplished, without any particular hardship to the owner of the tanks. These tanks, according to the evidence, have been in existence for a number of years and were at any rate, at one time, needed in the interests of villagers. It is not suggested that the owner has done anything by which the tanks have become insanitary. If that had been so, then the owner might well have been asked to take such steps, as would be necessary to put the tanks in a sanitary condition. The evidence shows that the expense of filling up the tanks would be considerable, at least Rs. 4000 and very likely much more and as pointed out by the respondent, he will have to dig in some other place in the village in order to fill up these tanks, with the result thht other tanks will come into existence and perhaps prove as injurious to the health of the villagers as the present one. So far as it appears, the Taluk Board seems to have acted without regard to any of these considerations and quite reckless of the consequences to the respondent. I am also of opinion judging from the evidence of its President that the Board has laid down a sort of general rule, although not reduced to the form of resolution, or formal proceeding that wherever there is an insanitary tank, within its jurisdiction it should require the owner to fill it up. That would not be a proper exercise of the power as has been pointed out in Maxwell on Interpretation of Statutes, page 208. See also Tinkler v. Wandsworth District Board of Works. The Board is required by the Act to consider each case on its own merits and if it does not do so, it would be exceeding the powers conferred on it by the Act. There is no trace on the record, of the Taluk Board having taken into consideration the particular circumstances in connection with these tanks before passing the order. On the whole I am of opinion that the Board's action in this case was not in proper exercise of the powers conferred on it by the Act and I would therefore dismiss the appeal with costs. The decree of the Lower Appellate Court however requires modification in order to give proper effect to our judgment. It should be declared that the plaintiff is not liable to fill up the tanks as required by the defendants' notice, dated 1st April 1915 and that the defendants be restrained in case they themselves fill up the tanks from recovering the cost thereof from the plaintiff.

The memorandum of objections is dismissed with costs.

Oldfield, J.—I agree with my learned brother's conclusion and deliver a separate judgment only because the questions raised are of great and increasing importance. For although in particular we are dealing with the validity of an order by the appellant Board requiring plaintiff to fill up certain tanks as insanitary, we have generally to define the limits, within which such action by a public body is subject to control by the courts and with the increase in the number and activities of such bodies to be anticipated in the near future disputes as to those limits may be frequent.

That the courts have power of control is not denied; and, no doubt in some directions the law is clear as to their extent, since there is no doubt that they can be exercised, if the action complained of is wholly outside the legal powers of the body concerned, or is taken for an ulterior motive. Gard v. Commissioners of Sewers. In cases however of the kind before us, in which the public body concerned proceeded within its apparent authority and the objection is that it ought not to have done so on the facts before it, such of the decisions referred to by my learned brother, as restrict their description of the circumstances in which the Court can interfere, to a bare reference to the unreasonable, or mala fide, or arbitrary and the capricious character of the action complained of, seem to me with all respect to afford very little assistance in cases similar to the present For it is not easier, when the conflict is between the interest of the community and that of the individual, than it is in other connections to apply the test of what is reasonable and, as will appear, that test must be applied for the present purpose primarily to the method, by which the merits of the case have been ascertained, rather than to those merits themselves, the test by arbitrary or capricious character of the proceedings is inconclusive, when as in the present case some reason for them is forthcoming and the complaint is to some extent of the public body's improper adherence to principle in disregard of the particular circumstances; and although the necessity for good faith in the procedure employed can be insisted on, that will carry the matter very little further, until the nature and extent of the minimum precautions to be obseryed have been defined. It may be useless to look for any absolutely exhuastive rule. But it is worth while to consider whether recent decisions do not indicate any, which will be susceptible of general statement and will suffice for the decision of the majority of cases, including the one before us.

In R v. The Board of Education, Farwell, L.J, without, as I understand him, departing from the effect of the language used in earlier cases, stated the law as follows:—” If the public body has exercised the discretion entrusted to it bona fide, not influenced by extraneous or irrelevant considerations and not arbitrarily or illegally, the courts cannot interfere. They are not a Court of appeal from the public body, but they have power to prevent… …its refusal of its true jurisdiction by the adoption of extraneous considerations in arriving at its conclusion, or deciding a point other that brought before it, in which cases the courts have regarded it as declining jurisdiction;” and the case will be the same, if the rejection of relevant instead of the adoption of extraneous considerations is in question, as appears from the reference to Reg v. St. George's Soothwaik, where a vestry declined to deal with the merits of a claim, because it considered only the amount which it thought that it could legally grant excassive It will, as the judgments in Weinberger v. Inglis, show, be presumed that an associated body, and similarly (it is not disputed) a public body, has in reaching its decision dealt fairly with the materials available to it; and, until that presumption is displaced, the Court will not attempt inquiry into the particular ground on which the decision was reached. But on the other hand that presumption may be displaced, as it was, to give two instances only in R. v. Board of Education, by inference that action was taken on a wrong understanding of the law, or the question in issue as in Williams v. Giddy, by evidence consisting there in an admission of counsel of the existence of matter, which it would have been reasonable to consider, but which was not considered at all, the result being an award which “though made under guise of exercising discretion, was at best a colourable performance and tantamount to a refusal by the public body comcerned, to exercise the discretion entrusted to it.” The facts in that case were extreme. But in it, as in the others, the Court interfered, because the use of a sound discretion by the public body concerned had been disproved, or more fully because that body was shown not to have given an honest consideration to the matters which a reasonable man would have considered before he decided.

To apply this to the case before us, there is first the contention which is supported also by reference to the wording of Sect. 100 of the Act, that the defendant Board did not consider the case honestly, because the members directly responsible for the order complained against did not themselves inspect plaintiff's tanks, but acted on the reports of their President and the District Medical and Sanitary Officer, who had done so. In fact Sect. 100 merely requires an inspection and does not specify by whom it is to be made and it is a sufficient answer to the general argument that no question of fact which an inspection would have decided is shown over to have been raised and that an obligation to make the substantial journies in some cases of over fifty miles from a Rail way which a personal inspection would entail, cannot fairly be regared as essential to the performance of their duties by Taluk Board members.

It is next pointed out that the notice issued by the Board required plaintiff to abate the nuisance alleged, as constituted by, his tanks in a particular way, by filling them up; and argument has been based on the evidence of D. W. 1, the president of the Board, since on this and other points it is our only source of information as to its procedure and reasons. He said that “the general course adopted when the Board finds insanitary tanks is to ask their filling up” and “in doing so, it never considered the question of expense;” and he admitted that in plaintiff's case no estimate of the costs of the work required was obtained, although it might have been as much as Rs. 4000 for one tank alone and according to other evidence would have been more. This, it is urged, shows that the Board had adopted a general preappointed rule for dealing with this and all similar cases without regard to the particular circumstances of each, and, if the objection were established it would clearly be valid, not only because some part of the matter reasonably demanding and available for consideration never received it, but with reference to the judgment of Turner, J. in Tinkler v. Wandsworth District Board of Works disallowing the order before him, on the ground that it had proceeded, on the footing of a general resolution “come to before that order had been issued and without reference to the particular case.” But, with all deference to my learned brother, it is necessary to distinguish between such a definite resolution as was there held to be in question and a policy, to which, as in Weinberger v. Inglis and (as I think) here, the decision under consideration may be intended to give effect. Nothing resembling such a resolution as was held proved in Tinkler v. Wandsworth, District Board of Works is established before us, and the most to be deduced from the evidence of the President seems to me to be a policy which it is probably neither possible nor desirable to discountenance, so long as its adoption does not preclude consideration of the facts of each case, to which it is proposed to apply it.

A stronger objection and one, which I am constrained to admit, is however that in fact such consideration did not take place, because the President deposed further that “if bunds were raised round the tanks to prevent sewage water falling into them, they would not be insanitary” and it is urged there could have been no honest or reasonably comprehensive consideration of the relevant facts, when the nature of the work to be required and the greater burden imposed by one remedy rather than another were not considered. That the erection of bunds would have been less expensive than the filling in of the tanks, which was actually directed is not denied, and the President has given no reason for preferring the latter. A duty to prefer the less onerous of the remedies available was recognised in Lalbhai v. Municipal Commissioner of Bombay and if a mere statement of the position is not sufficient, it need only be observed that the use of a sound discretion can be no less obligatory in respect of this part of the order before us, than of the remainder. On this ground therefore that order, cannot stand.

Another and more fundamental objection to it however arises in connection with the reference to sewage water as responsible for the insanitary condition of plaintiff's tanks, although it has been misapprehended by the Lower Appellate Court. For it is stated that the insanitary condition of the tanks had been admitted by plaintiff, although he had denied it in his plaint and, as paragraph 9 of the District Munsif's judgment shows, at the trial; and, after referring to the expedient of excluding the sewage by bunds as deserving consideration, it failed that as the President admitted the existing arrangements were inadequate to dispose of the sewage and that it and not the condition of the tanks was the cause of any nuisance, which required abatement. As to these facts there is no dispute; and it follows that the Board, if it is not to be regarded as having used its powers ultra vires, when admittedly no contingency in which it could legally use them against plaintiff had occurred, at least used them after neglecting one essential portion of the materials for its decision. There is no question here of the Courts sitting in appeal over the Board, or usurping its function as the judge of the existence and origin of a nuisance, but of the Board having passed its order on an assumption, which evidently on the facts admitted by its President was unfounded. In this respect again, that order has been shown to have been made in no fair exercise of its discretion.

These defects in the order being sufficient to justify the Court's interference with it, I concur in the decree proposed by my learned brother.

S.SAppeal allowed: Decree modified.