U.P. State Electricity Board v. Harishankar (1979)

Ejusdem generis is the subsidiary rule students reach for too quickly. Shown a list followed by general words, the average answer announces that the general words are confined to the class — and loses the question, because the rule is not triggered by every list.

This case supplies the discipline: five conditions, all of which must be satisfied before the rule applies. An answer that tests them one by one is doing what the Supreme Court did, and it can then explain the cases where the rule was refused as easily as the cases where it was applied.

The course states this case for the proposition rather than for its facts, and does not set out the enumeration that was in issue. Do not supply one. What the case establishes, and what the paper examines, is the list of conditions below; illustrate them from the other decisions the course does describe.

The Supreme Court laid down five conditions for the application of ejusdem generis:

1. the statute contains an enumeration of specific words;
2. the subjects of the enumeration constitute a class or category;
3. that class or category is not exhausted by the enumeration;
4. a general term follows the enumeration; and
5. there is no indication of a different legislative intent.

Begin from what the rule is for. When particular words pertaining to a class, category or genus are followed by general words, the general words are construed as limited to things of the same kind as those specified. The standard drafting examples are war, disturbance or any other cause; arms, ammunition or gun powder or any other goods; and bleaching, mercerising, organdie processing or any other process. A domestic illustration makes it concrete: a man who tells his wife to buy "vegetables, fruits, groceries and anything else she needs" is understood to mean food and grocery items by anything else, not unrelated purchases.

Each condition then does real work, and each has its own case:

• No class, no rule. In Ishwar Singh Bagga v. State of Rajasthan (1987) the words "any police officer authorized in this behalf or any other person authorized in this behalf by the State government" in s. 129 of the Motor Vehicles Act were in issue. Other person was not read ejusdem generis with police officer, because the mention of a single species — police officers — does not constitute a genus. This is the second condition failing, and it is the commonest way the rule is defeated.
• Class exhausted, no rule. If the specific words already cover the whole class, the general words must have been meant to add something outside it; otherwise they would be surplus. That is the third condition.
• A different intent displaces the rule. Words like otherwise do not attract it: in a definition of workman as any person who works under a contract with an employer "whether the contract be by way of manual labour, clerical work or otherwise", otherwise is not confined to work of a manual or clerical kind. That is the fifth condition.
• No occasion for the rule at all. In Calcutta Municipal Corpn. v. East India Hotels Ltd. (1994) 5 SCC 690 the section itself required a similar place, so there was no occasion to call in ejusdem generis; a restaurant with a proper dancing floor and music was similar to a dancing hall and needed a licence. Where the statute states the test of similarity itself, the maxim adds nothing.

Keep ejusdem generis distinct from its wider neighbour. Noscitur a sociis — a word is known by the company it keeps — is the broader principle, as Oswal Agro Mills Ltd. v. CCE states; ejusdem generis is its specialised form, requiring an enumerated class and a following general term. State of Assam v. R. Muhammad is the noscitur illustration: posting in Article 233(1), standing with appointment and promotion, means assigning an appointee or promotee to a position, not transfer from station to station.

It opens every ejusdem generis question, and it converts a problem question into a checklist: is there an enumeration; do the enumerated subjects form a class; is the class unexhausted; do general words follow; is there any contrary indication? Answer the five in order and state the result.

It disposes of the reflex argument that general words following any list must be cut down to that list — Ishwar Singh Bagga is the short answer, and the workman definition is the second.

It does not decide the scope of noscitur a sociis, which applies where words are merely susceptible of an analogous meaning and needs no enumerated genus. Nor does it decide what happens when the class is identified but the general words are ambiguous for some other reason; that is a question for the primary rules.