The Miscellaneous Provisions of the General Clauses Act

In one line

The last seven sections deal with the recovery of fines, punishment under two enactments, service by post, how an enactment is cited, a saving for earlier law, and the application of the whole Act to Ordinances.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: sections 25 to 31 of the General Clauses Act 1897 are grouped under the heading "Miscellaneous" and provide that the provisions relating to the levy of fines apply to fines imposed under any Act, rule or bye-law; that where an act constitutes an offence under two or more enactments the offender may be prosecuted and punished under either or any of them but shall not be liable to be punished twice for the same offence; that service by post is deemed effected by properly addressing, pre-paying and posting a registered letter and, unless the contrary is proved, to have been effected when the letter would be delivered in the ordinary course of post; how enactments and portions of enactments may be cited; a saving for the construction of enactments made before the Act; and that the expression "Central Act" includes an Ordinance promulgated by the President under article 123.

Section 25: recovery of fines

Sections 63 to 70 of the Indian Penal Code and the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure for the time being in force relating to the issue and execution of warrants for the levy of fines shall apply to all fines imposed under any Act, Regulation, rule or bye-law, unless that Act, Regulation, rule or bye-law contains an express provision to the contrary.

The point is that a fine imposed under a municipal bye-law or a regulatory Act is recovered by the same machinery as a fine under the general penal law, so that no special Act needs to invent its own.

The section names the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. Both have been replaced, by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023. Section 8(1) of this very Act supplies the answer: where an enactment repeals and re-enacts a provision, references to the provision so repealed are construed as references to the provision so re-enacted, unless a different intention appears. And the words "for the time being in force" in section 25 point the same way for the procedural Code.

Section 26: one act, two enactments

Where an act or omission constitutes an offence under two or more enactments, then the offender shall be liable to be prosecuted and punished under either or any of those enactments, but shall not be liable to be punished twice for the same offence.

The two halves

The first half is permissive. Where the same conduct is an offence under two Acts, the prosecution may choose. There is no rule that the special Act excludes the general one, or that the earlier excludes the later, unless the statute so provides.