Statutory Fiction and the Law of Savings

Prelude

Somewhere in Bhagalpur, in September 1975, a person walked into a post office with an envelope and a slip of paper.

The slip cost ten paise. It could be written out by hand on plain paper. The Post Office pressed a date stamp on it and handed it straight back across the counter. It certified that an article had been posted. It did not certify that the article was stamped, or that it would go out that day, or what was inside it. The envelope then joined everything else dropped into a letter box, and nobody, anywhere, wrote down that it had existed.

Fifty years and six months later, on 24 March 2026, that slip decided a second appeal in the High Court at Patna.¹ The easy thing to say is that the law is slow. That is true, but it is not the whole of it, and not the part worth writing about. The facility was withdrawn in 2011 and the parent statute repealed in 2024, and neither event made any difference to the case – nor should it have, because the later withdrawal of a postal facility does not erase an act of posting, or the evidentiary character of a document generated while that facility lawfully existed. The point lies elsewhere, and so far as I can see it has gone largely unremarked. While we were all watching the certificate of posting die, the provision it is always measured against was quietly changing beneath it.

The slip, and the case it decided

The Department of Posts was candid about what it was selling. Clause 32 of the Post Office Guide, Part I, is its own account of the object of the facility:²

“The object in granting certificates of posting is to afford the public an assurance that letters and other articles entrusted to servants or messengers for posting have actually been posted. The grant of a certificate will not, however, mean that the letters and articles … were fully prepaid with postage stamps, nor will it guarantee in any way the dispatch of the articles … on the same day … It must be clearly understood that the articles in respect of which such certificates are issued are not registered and that they are treated in exactly the same manner as if they had been posted in a letter box. In the event of loss, damage or delay, the certificates will confer no claim for compensation, nor do they furnish any proof of the nature of the contents.”

Four disclaimers, and the Department drafted all four itself. The machinery matched the promise. No register of such articles was kept anywhere, and no form was prescribed at all: a certificate could be written on plain paper. Not more than three articles could go on one certificate, and a form bearing any over-writing in that number was not to be accepted at all, which tells you what the Department expected people to do to it.³ The price began at three paise in 1957 and settled at three rupees in 2002, where it stayed till the end.⁴

The courts took much the same view of it, and took it early. Section 27 of the General Clauses Act, 1897 deems service effected on posting where a Central Act or Regulation contemplates service by post and the document has been properly addressed, pre-paid and posted by registered post.⁵ Only registered post will do for that purpose: the Calcutta High Court said so in 1967, leaving ordinary post and certificate of posting to the permissive presumption under Section 114 of the Evidence Act and to nothing more.⁶ A Division Bench of the same Court added in 1988 that the presumption is optional, one of fact and not of law, that a court “may think it fit not to raise any such presumption” at all, and that no obligatory presumption arises even for registered post unless the enactment itself contemplates service by post.⁷

The administration had been told the rest in 1968. A State Government wrote to the Law Commission that Rule 195 “constitutes no safeguard at all”, because where the guarantee is abused it is abused “in collusion with the officer who stamps the postal seal on the certificate”, and asked for a serial register. The Commission declined – a register could be faked as easily – and said that “the proper remedy would be to see that the letter is posted before the certificate is issued.”⁸ The proper remedy for a rule not being obeyed is that the rule should be obeyed. Sales continued for another forty-three years.

So the holding in March 2026 was never in doubt: a certificate of posting “merely raises a permissive presumption of posting, not of delivery”, and to treat it as conclusive is “legally impermissible”. The first appellate decree was set aside and the trial court’s dismissal restored.⁹

What is worth the reading is not the holding but the exhibits. The plaintiff filed a carbon copy of the letter, the original having gone into the post – and a certificate of posting, because the letter itself had gone. The carbon copy proved the contents but not the posting. The certificate proved the posting but, in the Department’s own words, furnished “no proof of the nature of the contents”.¹⁰ Each document proved exactly what the other could not. Half a century of litigation turned on the gap between two pieces of paper.

The omission, and the fiction left standing

The end came by subordinate legislation. G.S.R. 58(E) dated 31 January 2011 omitted Rule 195 and its sub-heading; three weeks later the Director (PO&I) sent it to the field with the direction that the facility “may be discontinued immediately”.¹¹ From that day the consolidated Rules carried, between the rule licensing stamp vendors and the sub-heading for late letters, a single line: “195. Omitted (Vide GSR 58(E) dated 31st January 2011)”.¹² The Department’s own Guide, still on its website, goes on explaining how to obtain one.

Neither document gives a reason.¹³ Not the collusion point of 1968; not the Supreme Court’s remark in 1981 that “there have been cases in the past, though rare, where postal certificates and even postal seals have been manufactured”; not its observation in 1994 that such a certificate “is easy to procure and does not inspire confidence”.¹⁴ “It has since been decided” is the entire official explanation, and whatever anyone says about why – this article included – is inference laid over a file note that declines to say.

Turn to the provision that does the excluding, because it is the more interesting document. Section 27 is not a rule of evidence in the ordinary sense; it is a statutory fiction. It directs that service “shall be deemed to be effected”, which is to say it requires a court to treat as established a fact that may well be untrue, and puts on the addressee the burden of proving the contrary. Section 114 does nothing of the kind. The first is a rebuttable presumption of law and shifts an onus; the second is a presumption of fact and shifts nothing until a judge chooses to draw it.

A fiction of that sort is purposive. That is settled since Pandurang Vinayak, applying East End Dwellings: where a statute deems something done which was not done, the court must ascertain for what purposes and between what persons the fiction operates, and carry it that far and no further.¹⁵ So one must ask what Section 27’s fiction was for.

The answer is not in Section 27. It is in Ganga Ram v. Phulwati, the Allahabad Full Bench of 1970 that remains the foundation of this line and was relied upon by the Supreme Court in 2011. The Full Bench reasons from Rules 62, 63 and 64(1) of the 1933 Rules and from the paragraphs of the Posts and Telegraphs Manual prescribing what a postman must record – a receipt on posting, no delivery without the addressee’s signature, an acknowledgment returned to the sender, endorsements made “in the discharge of their official duties”.¹⁶ That is the justification of the fiction: a sender using registered post was relieved of proving delivery because the State had already undertaken to record it. Section 27 did not pay registered post a compliment. It paid it a description – and a description depends on someone continuing to maintain the thing described.

The premise migrates

Consider what happened to that thing between June 2024 and October 2025. The Indian Post Office Act, 1898 was repealed with effect from 18 June 2024, though the Rules of 1933 survived it by statutory saving until the Post Office Rules, 2024 superseded them on 16 December 2024. The Post Office Act, 2023 runs to sixteen sections and does not use the expression “registered post” anywhere.¹⁷ By a departmental directive of 2 July 2025, Registered Post was merged into Speed Post with effect from 1 September 2025.¹⁸ Then, on 25 September 2025, the Post Office (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2025 restored registration – not as a service in its own right, but as a value-added feature that may be bought upon a Speed Post article for five rupees and GST, the article to be delivered to the addressee or an authorised representative.¹⁹

So the obvious argument is not open. It would be convenient to say that Section 27 now names a service that no longer exists and must be judicially translated. That is not what has happened. Registered post has not been abolished. It has been reconstituted: demoted from a product to a feature, priced separately, and given a definition in subordinate legislation that the 1897 draftsman never wrote and Parliament has never seen fit to enact.²⁰

Two familiar instincts are of no help here. The first is desuetude, and it is simply wrong: a provision does not lapse because the world it described has moved on, a statute being abrogated only by express or implied repeal, and the narrow opening left for the doctrine needing long and settled contrary usage.²¹ The second is construction. Statutes are always speaking, and an old word may take in a new thing of the same character – as the Supreme Court held in 1962, reading “telegraph line” in an Act of 1885 to cover wireless apparatus the legislature had never heard of.²² But the difficulty here is not whether the word can stretch to reach a new thing. The difficulty is that the thing itself is now defined, and redefined, somewhere else.

That is the point worth making, and it is not a complaint about executive lawlessness. The Regulations of 2025 were made under the 2023 Act and must be laid before each House of Parliament; the merger and the redefinition were done lawfully and in the open. The difficulty is structural, and it is worth stating with care. Section 27 fixes who bears the onus of proving service in a civil suit. The operational content of the service it names – what registration is, what incidents it carries, whether it stands as a product or becomes a five-rupee addition to another one – is now supplied by postal regulations capable of repeated amendment, and they were amended seven times in 2025 alone. It does not follow that the Department thereby decides what “registered post” means in an Act of 1897; a definition in subordinate legislation under one enactment does not construe another, and that question remains for the court. But that is exactly the difficulty. Parliament wrote the presumption once and has not touched it since. The Department designs and redesigns the service. The courts are left to work out, case by case, how the one maps onto the other. Anyone who has settled a notice clause lately will know how little that helps at the drafting stage.

The contrast sits in the same story and has needed no repair at all. Illustration (f) to Section 114 says only that the court may presume that the common course of business has been followed. It names no service, no department and no product, and it is for that reason capable of accommodating whatever mode of communication people are actually using; it has passed into Section 119(1) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 with not a word altered.²³ The humbler provision, which describes a function, has outlasted the grander one, which named a product. The lesson is a drafting lesson and it is cheap: write a presumption in terms of what a mode of service does – records the despatch, identifies the recipient, produces an endorsement capable of proof – and not in terms of whatever the Post Office is calling it this decade. That is only what Pandurang Vinayak makes a court work out afterwards in any event, and it is better done once in the section than repeatedly in the cause list.

The family of relics

The certificate of posting is not the only relic that walks. A rule is abolished; the rights it created are not. A statute is repealed, and the proceedings it opened carry on. An Act is replaced, and the decisions given under it are cited as though nothing had happened. The mechanism is the law of savings – sometimes Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, and sometimes an express saving in the repealing, replacing or sunset statute itself.²⁴

The Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1976 was repealed in 1999, its Repeal Act abating pending proceedings except where the State had taken physical possession. That distinction between paper possession and actual possession – which only the 1976 Act ever drew – decided a Supreme Court appeal in January 2026: revenue entries are not vesting, the mandatory notice under Section 10(5) was never served on the person in possession, the acquisition abated, and the land goes back.²⁵ A statute dead for a quarter of a century, allocating land in 2026.

The Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 was repealed in 2000, but FEMA kept a two-year window for complaints in respect of FERA offences. In July 2026 the Supreme Court quashed a complaint lodged in May 2002, inside that window, because the opportunity notice required by the proviso to Section 61(2) of the 1973 Act had never been served.²⁶ The repealed Act supplied the offence and the safeguard that defeated it.

The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 lapsed under its own sunset clause in May 1995, that clause itself saving pending proceedings. In May 2026 the Supreme Court granted bail under the UAPA and the NDPS Act on K.A. Najeeb, which rests in turn on a 1996 decision about undertrials held under the TADA.²⁷ The Act expired thirty-one years ago; its jurisprudence still sets the floor.

What separates the certificate of posting from all of these is that it was never a statute. It was a rule – one line of Part VIII of the 1933 Rules. Statutes leave behind rights, liabilities and principles, and the law of savings is built to carry them forward. The certificate needed no saving clause to remain evidentially relevant. It created no continuing right and imposed no continuing liability. What it left behind was a document, and a habit of treating that document as though it proved something – permissive, discretionary, rebuttable, described by the Department itself as no proof of delivery and by the courts since 1967 as the weakest of its family. That was enough to sustain a second appeal in 2026, fifty years after the letter was posted, fifteen years after the rule was deleted, and two years after the parent Act was repealed. The relic that was only a rule has proved the most durable of the lot, because what survived it was not a right or a liability but a habit of evidence – and no saving clause is needed to preserve a habit, nor any repeal capable of ending one.

A closing word

None of this is a complaint, and none of it is anybody’s fault. Every institution did its own work properly. A State Government identified the defect in 1968 and the Law Commission gave its reasons for leaving it alone. The Supreme Court warned twice. The Department withdrew the facility, and later rebuilt registration in a different shape for reasons of its own, lawfully and on the record. Parliament repealed the parent Act. The courts went on deciding cases under all of it, correctly, because the withdrawal of a facility cannot unmake the posting of a letter. Nobody was ever responsible for the sequence as a whole, and no single institution was placed to be.

That is why relics are worth attending to. A relic in a statute book is a provision that has kept its authority while the arrangements that justified it have been withdrawn, consolidated or redefined somewhere below it. The certificate of posting is only the instructive case, because with it the whole cycle – practice, rule, statute, memory – can be seen from beginning to end. Section 27 is the live one.

There is also a cost that no doctrine measures. Read the array in the Patna appeal and the arithmetic of delay becomes a family record: the appellants are the widow and the children of a man the cause title describes as deceased, and the respondent is the son of a man himself described as deceased.²⁸ The people who posted that letter, and the people who denied receiving it, did not live to hear what their slip of paper was worth. Their children did.

As for Rule 195, it stood in the consolidated Rules exactly where it always stood, reduced to five words and a citation – until 16 December 2024, when the Post Office Rules, 2024 superseded the rulebook of 1933 entire, “except as respects things done or omitted to be done before such suppression”. The headstone was cleared away three months before the Patna High Court gave judgment. The saving clause stayed. So did the Evidence Act of 1872, which the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam repealed in 2024 but continued for proceedings already pending – and that appeal had been pending since 1997.²⁹ Nothing was erased. Everything was forwarded.

References

1. Smt. Kiran Singh v. Smt. Anjushree Banerjee, High Court of Judicature at Patna, Second Appeal No. 317 of 1997 (Ramesh Chand Malviya, J.), reserved 18.02.2026, delivered 24.03.2026. The suit was Title Suit No. 178 of 1978 (Sub-Judge I, Bhagalpur); the sale deed was dated 21.07.1973 and the agreement for re-conveyance 07.07.1974; Exhibit 1 is the letter dated 25.09.1975 and Exhibit 4 the certificate of posting: ibid., paras 2–3, 8 and 10.i.
2. Post Office Guide, Part I, clause 32, quoted save for immaterial words. The Guide as the Department of Posts hosts it today still sets clauses 32 and 33 out in the present tense and carries pre-2011 postage tables: https://www.indiapost.gov.in/documents/documents/ManualsGuides/PO_Guide_Part-1.pdf. It is an un-updated document, and is evidence of what the facility was, not that it survives.
3. Post Office Guide, Part I, clause 33(1)(a)–(c) and 33(2), with Notes 1 and 2 – Note 1 permitting a certificate on plain paper, so that the printed form (MS-19) was a convenience and never a requirement; Note 2 excluding letters posted in train and steamer letter boxes and redirected articles. Rule 195(1) of the Indian Post Office Rules, 1933 separately required the certificate to be presented to the officer on duty along with the articles. The rule stood in Part VIII under the sub-heading “III – Certificate of Posting”, between Rule 194-B (licensing of persons selling postage stamps) and the sub-heading “IV – Late Letters, Postcards or Packets”, and was made under s. 21(2)(d) read with s. 74 of the Indian Post Office Act, 1898.
4. Indian Inland Postal Rates 1957–2019 (compiled by Abhishek Bhuwalka from Department of Posts notifications in the Gazette of India), Table 33: Rs 0.03 from 01.04.1957; Rs 0.10 from 15.05.1968; Rs 0.20 from 01.06.1978; Rs 2.00 from 11.06.1990; Rs 3.00 from 01.02.2002, for up to three articles; discontinued 31.01.2011.
5. General Clauses Act, 1897, s. 27. The section operates where a Central Act or Regulation “authorizes or requires any document to be served by post”, and then deems service effected by properly addressing, pre-paying and posting the document by registered post, unless a different intention appears and unless the contrary is proved. That the opening words are themselves a condition, so that no obligatory presumption arises where the enactment in question does not contemplate service by post, is the ground of decision in Mono Ranjan Dasgupta (n. 7 below). On the relation between the two devices see C.C. Alavi Haji v. Palapetty Muhammed, (2007) 6 SCC 555, describing the presumption under s. 27 as the “far stronger” and specific presumption and that under s. 114 of the Evidence Act as the general one.
6. Sukumar Guha v. Naresh Chandra Ghosh, 1967 SCC OnLine Cal 15 : AIR 1968 Cal 49 (Amaresh Roy, J.), para 13: “though presumption under Section 27 of the General Clauses Act can only arise when the notice is sent by Registered Post, there may arise a presumption under Section 114 of the Evidence Act when notice is sent by ordinary post or under Certificate of Posting.” The passage is often cited at second hand from Bachchan Lal v. Ram Prakash, 2015 SCC OnLine All 2134, para 19, and Krishna Kumar Gupta v. Manoj Kumar Sahu, 2022 SCC OnLine All 528, para 10, which render it in slightly different words; both are registered-post decisions in which the tenant lost, and neither is authority that a certificate of posting is not service.
7. Mono Ranjan Dasgupta v. Suchitra Ganguly, AIR 1989 Cal 14 (DB) (A.M. Bhattacharjee and B.P. Banerjee, JJ., 19.02.1988), paras 7 and 9. The Bench also held, adopting Gobinda Chandra Saha v. Dwarka Nath, (1915) 19 Cal WN 489, that the presumption is one of fact and stands rebutted where the addressee pledges his oath that the cover was never tendered to him.
8. Law Commission of India, Thirty-Eighth Report: Indian Post Office Act, 1898 (February 1968), paras 65–66, at p. 25. The comment quoted is that of a State Government on the draft Report (S. No. 170); the proposal for a serial register was the State Government’s, and the answer that a register could itself be faked (“An entry can be made fictitiously even in the register”) is the Commission’s – the two are often run together as one quotation, and should not be. The Report discusses the enabling power under the pre-consolidation numbering “s. 21(1)(b)”; if quoted, its numbering should be reproduced with “[now s. 21(2)(d)]” added.
9. Kiran Singh (n. 1 above), paras 15, 17 and 19 (the words quoted are from paras 15 and 19), and paras 33–34 for the disposal. The first two substantial questions framed at admission were whether despatch by certificate of posting has any evidentiary value in view of AIR 1994 SC 678, and whether it raises a presumption of posting “and nothing more”: ibid., para 8.
10. Ibid., para 10.ii, where the carbon copy of Exhibit 1 was defended as secondary evidence “since the original was dispatched to the defendant”, and para 19, recording that receipt was specifically denied, that no independent postal official was examined and that no acknowledgment was produced.
11. G.S.R. 58(E) dated 31.01.2011, Department of Posts, F. No. 2-4/2008-PO – the Indian Post Office (Third Amendment) Rules, 2011 – made under s. 21(2)(d) read with s. 74 of the 1898 Act and effective on publication in the Gazette; and D.G. Posts No. 2-4/2008-PO dated 23.02.2011, which circulated it with the direction that the facility “may be discontinued immediately”. The operative date is 31.01.2011; the date “w.e.f. 01.04.2011” found in some accounts has no foundation in either document. “Under Certificate of Posting” (UCP or UPC) was not a separate facility.
12. Indian Post Office Rules, 1933, as then consolidated, Part VIII, Rule 195, which read in its entirety: “195. Omitted (Vide GSR 58(E) dated 31st January 2011)”, the sub-heading “III – Certificate of Posting” having disappeared. For the fate of the 1933 Rules themselves, see n. 17 below.
13. Neither G.S.R. 58(E) nor the circular of 23.02.2011 assigns any reason. The frequently repeated explanation – that the facility was being misused and was of no evidentiary value – is not in the official text.
14. Mst. L.M.S. Ummu Saleema v. B.B. Gujaral, (1981) 3 SCC 317 : AIR 1981 SC 1191 (three Judges), paras 5–6; and Gadakh Yashwantrao Kankarrao v. E.V. alias Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, (1994) 1 SCC 682 : AIR 1994 SC 678, para 61. That the reasoning in Gadakh is not confined to election jurisprudence was held in Kiran Singh (n. 1 above), para 18.
15. State of Bombay v. Pandurang Vinayak Chaphalkar, AIR 1953 SC 244, applying East End Dwellings Co. Ltd. v. Finsbury Borough Council, [1952] AC 109: where a statute enacts that something shall be deemed to have been done which in fact was not done, the court is bound to ascertain for what purposes and between what persons the statutory fiction is to be resorted to, and to carry it to its logical conclusion within those limits.
16. Ganga Ram v. Smt. Phulwati, AIR 1970 All 446 (FB) (S.D. Khare, R.B. Misra and H.N. Seth, JJ.), para 10. It is not a certificate-of-posting case: it concerns a notice sent by registered post and returned “refused”, and answers all three referred questions in favour of the landlord. Its reasoning proceeds from Rules 62, 63 and 64(1) of the 1933 Rules and paragraphs 183, 191 and 195 of the Posts and Telegraphs Manual, holding that the endorsements are made by postmen and clerks “in the discharge of their official duties”. The Full Bench was referred to and relied upon in Samittri Devi v. Sampuran Singh, (2011) 3 SCC 556.
17. Post Office Act, 2023 (43 of 2023), in force from 18.06.2024, s. 16 repealing the Indian Post Office Act, 1898 while providing that rules, notifications and orders made under it continue “unless and until they are superseded”. The 1933 Rules accordingly survived the repeal of their parent Act by seven months, and were superseded by the Post Office Rules, 2024, G.S.R. 767(E) dated 16.12.2024, made under s. 12 of the 2023 Act “in suppression of the Indian Post Office Rules, 1933, except as respects things done or omitted to be done before such suppression”, and in force from that date. The Post Office Regulations, 2024 were notified the same day. Of the 2023 Act itself: s. 4 confines the exclusive privilege to the issue of postage stamps; s. 8 succeeds s. 14 of the 1898 Act, which was confined to proceedings for the recovery of postage; and the Act nowhere uses the expression “registered post”.
18. Department of Posts, Mail Operations Division, No. Mail-30/5/2025-D-DoP dated 02.07.2025, on action consequent to the proposed merger of Registered Post with Speed Post, providing for implementation from 01.09.2025; the file number is identified in the Training Division’s follow-up letter F. No. Tr-13/5/2024-Training-DOP dated 09.07.2025, directing that references to “Registered Post” and “Registered Post with Acknowledgement Due” in instructions, SOPs and training material be amended. A further communication of 06.06.2025, reported to have been addressed to Ministries asking that references to “Registered Post” in legislation and rules be replaced by “Speed Post”, is stated as reported and has not been seen by the author.
19. Post Office (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2025, S.O. 4375(E) dated 25.09.2025, in force from 01.10.2025, amending the Post Office Regulations, 2024 (n. 17 above): Speed Post becomes the basic inland service and registration is available upon it as a value-added service for documents and parcels, at Rs 5 per item plus GST, the article being delivered to the addressee or an authorised representative. The Regulations of 2024 were amended seven times in 2025 alone. Regulations under the 2023 Act are required by s. 14 to be laid before each House of Parliament.
20. Department of Posts, “Clarification on Rationalization of Domestic Mails products”, PIB release dated 06.08.2025: the Department states that it has unified the processing of Registered and Speed Post items, that Registered Post is addressee-specific while Speed Post is address-specific, and that a customer may book “Speed Post with registration”, which will be delivered to the addressee.
21. State of Maharashtra v. Narayan Shamrao Puranik, (1982) 3 SCC 519 – a statute can be abrogated only by express or implied repeal and does not fall into desuetude. A narrower opening was left in Municipal Corporation for City of Pune v. Bharat Forge Co. Ltd., (1995) 3 SCC 434, which saw no objection in principle to the doctrine where there has been a long period not merely of neglect but of settled contrary usage. Neither situation is the present one.
22. Senior Electric Inspector v. Laxminarayan Chopra, AIR 1962 SC 159, construing “telegraph line” in the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 to take in wireless apparatus unknown to the legislature of 1885 – the leading Indian statement that a statute is always speaking. The 1885 Act was itself repealed by the Telecommunications Act, 2023, in force from 26.06.2024, having outlived the telegram, discontinued on 15.07.2013, by some eleven years.
23. Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, s. 119(1), Illustration (f), and s. 119(2)(vii), corresponding to s. 114 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
24. Sometimes s. 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897 (Act 10 of 1897), under which rights acquired, liabilities incurred and proceedings instituted under a repealed Central Act are unaffected unless a contrary intention appears; and sometimes an express saving in the repealing, replacing or sunset statute itself, as in each of the three instances that follow.
25. Dalsukhbhai Bachubhai Satasia v. State of Gujarat, 2026 INSC 21 (B.V. Nagarathna and R. Mahadevan, JJ.), decided 06.01.2026, applying State of U.P. v. Hari Ram, (2013) 4 SCC 280, and construing ss. 3 and 4 of the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Repeal Act, 1999 with ss. 10(3), 10(5) and 10(6) of the 1976 Act.
26. Standard Chartered Bank v. Enforcement Officer, Ministry of Home Affairs, 2026 INSC 727 (J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, JJ.), decided 21.07.2026, holding service of the opportunity notice under the proviso to s. 61(2) of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973 to be mandatory before cognizance. The complaint was lodged in May 2002, within the two-year window preserved by s. 49(3) of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 for offences under FERA committed before its repeal with effect from 01.06.2000.
27. Syed Iftikhar Andrabi v. National Investigation Agency, Jammu, 2026 INSC 503, decided 18.05.2026, granting bail in a prosecution under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, relying on Union of India v. K.A. Najeeb, (2021) 3 SCC 713, which rests in turn on Shaheen Welfare Association v. Union of India, (1996) 2 SCC 616, a decision on undertrials held under the TADA. The TADA lapsed on 23.05.1995 by force of its own s. 1(4), which kept it in force for eight years from 24.05.1987, the expiry being expressed not to affect proceedings already instituted.
28. Kiran Singh (n. 1 above), cause title. Appellant no. 1 is described as the wife of Narain Pd. Singh and appellants 2.1 to 2.3 as the sons and daughter of “Late Narain Prasad Singh”; the sole respondent is described as “Sourja Banerjee Son of Late Sandip Banerjee”, the suit having been instituted in 1978 by Smt. Anjushree Banerjee.
29. Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, s. 170(1) repealing the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 and s. 170(2) providing that any application, trial, inquiry, investigation, proceeding or appeal pending immediately before the commencement of the Adhiniyam shall be dealt with under the Evidence Act as in force immediately before such commencement.