Jugalkishore v. Raw Cotton Co. (1955)

This is the Indian statement of the literal rule, and it is the passage to quote first in any answer on the primary rules. Its value is that it does not merely tell a court to read the words literally: in three sentences it gives the whole architecture of the primary rules — where the court starts, on what double condition it may leave the plain words, and what it must do when the words cannot bear a second meaning.

The second reason it matters is a warning about labels. Jugalkishore calls the literal rule "that golden rule of construction". So does Lalita Kumari. The names courts use are not reliable; look at what the court actually did.

A firm assigned its book debts to a company in February 1949, while a suit on one of those debts was pending. The decree in that suit was passed in December 1949, in the firm's favour. The company then applied to execute the decree as its transferee under Order 21 Rule 16 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The whole question was one of sequence: the assignment came first, the decree came afterwards.

The company was not a transferee of the decree. Order 21 Rule 16 contemplates that a decree has first been passed and has then been transferred by assignment in writing or by operation of law. Here the document came first and the decree later, so there was nothing answering the description of a transferred decree.

The rule of construction on which the Court proceeded, in S. R. Das J.'s words:

"The cardinal rule of construction of statutes is to read the statute literally, that is by giving to the words used by the legislature their ordinary, natural and grammatical meaning. If, however, such a reading leads to absurdity and the words are susceptible of another meaning the Court may adopt the same. But if no such alternative construction is possible, the Court must adopt the ordinary rule of literal interpretation."

Read the passage as three steps, because that is how it is examined:

• Start with the ordinary, natural and grammatical meaning of the words.
• Leave it only if that reading leads to absurdity and the words are susceptible of another meaning.
• If the words cannot bear another meaning, apply them literally anyway.

The double condition in the second step is the point most answers miss. Absurdity alone does not license a departure. The words must also be capable of a second meaning, because a court may choose between meanings the words can bear but may not invent a meaning they cannot bear. The maxim behind the rule is a verbis legis non est recedendum — you must not vary the words of the statute while interpreting it.

Applied to the facts, the method is short. The literal reading of Order 21 Rule 16 produced no absurdity, so there was no occasion to look for an alternative. The Court also noticed two supporting points: the deed transferred property to which the vendors are entitled, not property to which they might become entitled; and under s. 8 of the Transfer of Property Act a transfer passes only the interest the transferor is then capable of passing. No decree existed when the assignment was made, so none passed.

It opens any question asking you to explain the literal rule with decided cases, and it is the best single authority for the sequence the primary rules follow — an examiner who asks how a court chooses between the rules is asking for these three sentences plus an illustration. Pair it with Tej Kiran Jain, where Article 105(2) was held to mean "what it says in language which could not be plainer" and anything was given its widest import, and with G. Narayanaswami v. G. Pannerselvam for the corollary that a court may not write words into a provision.

It disposes of the argument that a court may leave plain words merely because the result is thought inconvenient or the policy behind the provision is narrower than its language — the point B.N. Mutto makes on the same side — and it disposes of the looser claim that absurdity by itself is enough to open the golden rule.

It does not decide what counts as absurdity, and it does not rank the primary rules as rival techniques. It also carries a caution rather than a holding on terminology: the label "golden rule" in this judgment means the literal rule, so do not cite the phrase from Jugalkishore as authority for Grey v. Pearson.