BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 History of Courts 2024-25 - ATKT Set 2 75/25 Question Paper with Solutions

The separation of powers is the doctrine that the three functions of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial, should be exercised by three distinct organs, and that no organ should exercise the functions of another or control the persons who do.

Its classical statement is by Montesquieu in De l'Esprit des Lois (1748), whose argument was that power must be a check upon power: when the legislative and executive powers are united in one person there can be no liberty, and if the judicial power is joined to either, the judge becomes an oppressor.

The object of the Indian High Courts Act, 1861 was to end the dual system of courts by abolishing the Supreme Courts (the Crown courts of the Presidency towns) and the Sadar Diwani and Sadar Nizamat Adalats (the Company's courts) and merging them into a single High Court at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

Its object was therefore uniformity of justice: one court at the head of each Presidency exercising the jurisdiction of both former systems, so that a litigant's rights no longer depended on which of two parallel systems took his case.

The Regulating Act, 1773 (13 Geo. III c. 63), by section 13, empowered the British Crown to establish, by charter or letters patent, a Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Calcutta.

The Crown exercised the power by the Royal Charter of 26 March 1774, and the Court began sitting in October 1774, with Sir Elijah Impey as the first Chief Justice.

Under Article 217(2) of the Constitution, a person is qualified for appointment as a judge of a High Court if he is a citizen of India and:

1. has for at least ten years held a judicial office in the territory of India; or
2. has for at least ten years been an advocate of a High Court, or of two or more such courts in succession.

Meaning

A court of record is a court whose acts and judicial proceedings are enrolled and preserved for perpetual memory and testimony. Two consequences follow, and they are the whole of the concept:

1. Its records are of the highest evidentiary value. They are admitted without question and their truth cannot be challenged in any court; a record of such a court proves itself.
2. It has an inherent power to punish for contempt of itself, so that it can protect its own authority and the administration of justice without applying to any other body.

In the Constitution

1. Article 129: the Supreme Court shall be a court of record and shall have all the powers of such a court including the power to punish for contempt of itself.
2. Article 215: every High Court shall be a court of record with the same powers.

2. The Mayor's Courts of 1726 were courts of record, and it is one reason the Company petitioned the Crown for them: a Company court's decree was of doubtful value in England, while a Crown court's record was a judgment of the King's court, provable and enforceable there.
3. The Supreme Court at Calcutta (1774) was a court of record with the prerogative writs and a supervisory jurisdiction over the inferior courts of Calcutta.
4. The Act of Settlement, 1781 made the Sadar Diwani Adalat a court of record, with an appeal to the King-in-Council, which is what gave the Company's own appellate court a proper legal standing for the first time.
5. The High Courts established under the Indian High Courts Act, 1861 were courts of record, and Article 225 continued them as such.

Importance

Being a court of record secures three things: the certainty of the record, so that what a court decided cannot afterwards be disputed; the authority of the court, through the contempt power; and, historically, the recognition of Indian judgments abroad, since a record of a court of record could be proved in England.

7. To manage its funds and provide for the election of its members.
8. To visit and inspect universities in accordance with the Bar Council of India's directions.

The role of the Bar Council of India (section 7)

1. To lay down standards of professional conduct and etiquette.
2. To lay down the procedure of the disciplinary committees.
3. To safeguard the rights, privileges and interests of advocates.
4. To promote and support law reform.
5. To promote legal education and lay down its standards in consultation with the universities and the State Bar Councils.
6. To recognise universities whose law degree qualifies for enrolment, and to visit and inspect them.
7. To organise legal aid.
8. To recognise foreign qualifications on a reciprocal basis.
9. To hear appeals under section 37, and to exercise disciplinary jurisdiction under sections 36 and 36B.
10. To make rules under section 49.

Significance

The Bar Councils make the Indian legal profession self-governing. Before 1961 admission and discipline lay with the High Courts; the Act transferred both to bodies elected by advocates. That is a constitutional value and not merely an administrative arrangement: a Bar that argues against the State for a living cannot safely be licensed by the State, and the independence of the Bar is a condition of the independence of the Bench.

Criticism

Disciplinary proceedings are slow, which is why section 36B imposed a one-year limit; the Councils are elected bodies, so regulation is exposed to the politics of Bar Council elections; and the standard of legal education, their statutory responsibility, remains very uneven across roughly 1,500 law colleges. The Law Commission has observed that the Bar Council both regulates legal education and represents the profession, and that the two roles sit awkwardly together.

2. Four Courts of Circuit were set up for Calcutta, Dacca, Murshidabad and Patna, staffed by covenanted English servants, going on circuit twice a year to try prisoners committed by the Magistrates, with the Kazi and Mufti retained to expound the law.
3. The Sadar Nizamat Adalat was moved from Murshidabad to Calcutta under the Governor-General and Council, assisted by the Chief Kazi and two Muftis. Criminal justice passed in substance from the Nawab to the Company.
4. Muslim criminal law was reformed: liability for homicide made to turn on intention rather than on the instrument; the relatives' right to pardon a murderer or accept blood money curtailed; mutilation replaced by imprisonment with hard labour.

The Code of 1793

The Cornwallis Code, forty-eight Regulations:

1. Separation of the judiciary from the revenue administration. The Collector was stripped of all judicial power; each district received a District Judge with no revenue duty.
2. The Magistracy was given to the District Judge.
3. The Mal Adalats were abolished and revenue disputes transferred to the ordinary Diwani Adalats.

Defects

Indians were excluded from all responsible office, so the judge commonly knew neither the language nor the customs of the parties; this is the gravest criticism and was reversed only by Bentinck in 1831. The new hierarchy produced delay and arrears; courts were few and distant; the judges were civil servants, not lawyers; and the system proved so elaborate that Bentinck later abolished the Provincial Courts of Appeal and the Courts of Circuit.

2. Separation of central and provincial subjects and budgets for the first time, which is the beginning of the federal division of powers completed by the Act of 1935.
3. A bicameral legislature at the Centre: a Council of State (upper house) and a Legislative Assembly (lower house), replacing the single Imperial Legislative Council, with a majority of members elected. The Governor-General retained overriding powers, including certification of Bills.
4. Extension of the franchise on a property, tax and education qualification, to about five million people.
5. Extension of communal representation: separate electorates, already given to Muslims in 1909, were extended to Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and Indian Christians.
6. Three of the six members of the Governor-General's Executive Council, other than the Commander-in-Chief, were to be Indians.
7. A High Commissioner for India was created in London, taking over some functions from the Secretary of State.

Criticism

Dyarchy was unworkable. Responsibility was divided so that nobody could be held to account; ministers held the departments with no money, since the revenue-raising subjects were reserved; the Governor's overriding powers made ministerial responsibility largely nominal; and the franchise was narrow. The Congress rejected the Act as disappointing and unsatisfactory, and the reforms were overtaken by the Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919.

What were the effects of the decision held in this case?

a) The facts

1. Shahbaz Beg Khan, an Afghan who had served in the Company's army, settled at Patna and acquired considerable property. He had no children.
2. He brought his nephew, Bahadur Beg, from Kabul, and was said to have intended to adopt him.
3. On Shahbaz Beg's death his widow, Naderah Begum, took possession of the estate, claiming under a deed of gift (hibanama) and a deed of dower.
4. Bahadur Beg claimed as adopted son and applied to the Patna Provincial Council.
5. The Council referred the matter to its law officers, the Kazi and two Muftis, directing them to go to the spot, examine the parties and report.

2. It provoked the Governor-General in Council, which protested that district officers had been made personally liable at Calcutta, under English law, for acts done in the discharge of their duty.
3. It brought the country courts to a standstill, since no Kazi, Mufti or member of a Provincial Council could act while liable to be sued.
4. It raised the question of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over Company servants and native law officers, which the Regulating Act had left undefined.
5. It led to a parliamentary inquiry by a Select Committee of the House of Commons.
6. It produced the Act of Settlement, 1781, whose provisions answer this case directly: the judicial officers of the country courts protected for acts done in their judicial capacity; the Governor-General and Council exempted for official acts; revenue matters excluded; no man within the Court merely as a zamindar or farmer of revenue; Hindu and Muslim personal law to be applied in inheritance and succession; and the Sadar Diwani Adalat made a court of record with an appeal to the King-in-Council.

4. The Council sent its law officers, the Kazi and two Muftis, to examine and report. They went to the house, seized the property, and reported the widow's deeds to be forged.
5. The Council decreed the estate to Bahadur Beg on that report alone, allowing the widow a one-fourth share as dower.
6. She refused the share and took sanctuary in a dargah.
7. She then sued in the Supreme Court at Calcutta against Bahadur Beg, the Kazi and the Muftis, and the causes of action she pleaded are those the question names: assault, battery, false imprisonment, breaking her house, and depriving her of her property. These are the English forms of action in trespass, which is itself significant: an Indian widow was suing the officers of a Company court in English forms, in a Crown court, for what they had done under a decree of that Company court.
8. The Supreme Court held that it had jurisdiction, the defendants being persons employed by the Company; held the law officers' proceedings and the seizure illegal; gave judgment for the widow; awarded Rs 3,00,000 in damages; and, when they could not pay, committed them to prison.

b) The consequences of the decision

6. It led to a Select Committee of the House of Commons and then to the Act of Settlement, 1781, which protected the judicial officers of the country courts for acts done in their judicial capacity, exempted the Governor-General and Council for official acts, excluded revenue matters, directed the application of Hindu and Muslim personal law, and made the Sadar Diwani Adalat a court of record.
7. In the long run it settled the principle, though not for another century and a half, that an officer is protected only for what he does within his authority, and is personally answerable for what he does outside it.

1. Conspiracy. On the complaint of Mohan Prasad, Nandkumar was charged, together with Fowke and Radhacharan, with conspiring to bring false accusations, in substance a charge of having fabricated the case against Hastings. This proceeding was begun first and was still pending when the second charge was brought.
2. Forgery, which is the charge he was hanged for. He was indicted for forging a bond, said to have been executed in 1770 in connection with the estate of Bulaki Das. The prosecution was again at the instance of Mohan Prasad. He was tried in the Supreme Court at Calcutta before Chief Justice Sir Elijah Impey and the puisne judges, with an English jury, under the English forgery statute which made forgery a capital felony, was convicted, and was hanged on 5 August 1775.

b) Reasons why the decision was unfair

1. An English statute was applied to an Indian for an act done before the Court existed. The forgery was alleged to have been committed in 1770; the Supreme Court was established in 1774, and the English statute had never been expressly extended to Bengal. Nandkumar could have had no notice of the law under which he was hanged.

For these reasons the trial is described in Indian legal history as a judicial murder, a killing carried out through the forms of law.

4. Kamaluddin applied to the Supreme Court at Calcutta for a writ of habeas corpus, contending that his accounts were disputed and unsettled, that he was only the ostensible holder and not the person really liable, and that imprisonment before his liability had been determined was unlawful.
5. The Court issued the writ. On the return made by the Revenue Council it held the facts stated to be defective, that is insufficient in law to justify the detention.
6. The Court laid down:

• that where the account is disputed, a person must be admitted to bail until the enquiry into his obligation to pay is complete, since imprisonment cannot precede the determination of liability;
• that the ostensible holder of a farm is not to be imprisoned until the under-renter, the person really liable, has been called on to pay and has been proved insolvent;
• that a return to habeas corpus must state facts which in law justify the detention, and a defective return entitles the prisoner to be discharged or bailed.

1. Kamaluddin was accordingly released on bail.

5. It produced legislation. The Act of Settlement, 1781 expressly excluded revenue matters, and acts done in the collection of the revenue, from the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, reversing the practical effect of the decision.
6. It left a principle behind it. The rule that a man is not to be imprisoned for a debt whose amount is still disputed, and that a surety or nominal holder is not liable until the principal has been pursued, survived the Act that took the jurisdiction away, and the same two propositions decided the Swaroop Chand case.

For full marks, cover: the two Mayor's Courts, the constitution and jurisdiction of the court of 1726, then the causes of conflict under structural and practical heads, the instances, the Charter of 1753 and how it resolved them, and an assessment.

1. The two Mayor's Courts

The Charter of 1687, granted by the Company under powers from James II, established at Madras a Corporation of a Mayor, twelve Aldermen and sixty or more Burgesses, with a Mayor's Court trying civil and criminal causes as a court of record, deciding according to justice and good conscience, assisted by a Recorder learned in the law, with an appeal to the Admiralty Court. It was a Company court.

The Charter of 1726, granted by George I on the Company's petition, established a Mayor's Court in each of the three Presidency towns. These were Crown courts, and the conflicts this question is about are theirs.

2. The Governor-in-Council's triple role. It was the executive government, the appellate court from the Mayor's Court, and, as Justices of the Peace, the criminal court. A court whose appeals are heard by the executive cannot be independent of it, and an executive that must obey a court it can overrule will not.
3. The Aldermen's tenure. They held office for life and filled their own vacancies, so the Governor could neither appoint nor remove them. This was the only real independence the Court had, and it was the thing the Governors resented most.
4. Employment. The Mayor and Aldermen were the Company's own servants, so in a suit against the Company or a senior servant the judges were subordinate to the defendant. The Court's independence and its members' careers pulled in opposite directions.

B. Causes arising from jurisdiction

1. Jurisdiction over Indians. The Charter set a territorial test and did not exclude Indians, so suits between Indians came before the Court. The Governor-in-Council maintained that disputes touching caste, religion and personal law should be left to the parties' own communities, and that the Court's interference disturbed the peace of the settlement, for which the Governor was responsible.

4. How the conflict actually ran

The recurring pattern was this. A matter of doubtful jurisdiction arose; the Mayor's Court consulted the Governor-in-Council; the Council upheld the jurisdiction in terms but made objections to the ground of the claim; and the Court, holding the objections not substantial, proceeded to decree the suit. Neither side would concede and neither would force a conclusion.

The instances. At Madras, over the Court's claim to try suits between Indians touching caste and religious usage, and over the Governor's interference with its process. At Bombay, in its sharpest form, over the jurisdiction of the Mayor's Court over natives in matters concerning their caste and religion. At Calcutta, over process against Company servants and the Governor's refusal to enforce orders.

5. The resolution: the Charter of 1753

The Crown ended the conflict in the Governor's favour:

1. The Mayor and Aldermen were thereafter appointed by the Governor-in-Council, which removed the Court's independence at a stroke and cured cause 3 by abolishing it.

For full marks, cover: what the dual system was, how it arose, the two lines of courts, the differences, the difficulties, the reform movement, the amalgamation of 1861, and then a comment, that is an evaluation, since the question asks you to comment and not merely to describe.

1. What the dual system was, and how it arose

Before 1861 two systems of courts of entirely dissimilar origin existed side by side in British India:

1. the Crown's courts in the Presidency towns, created by Royal Charters under Acts of Parliament, applying English law; and
2. the Company's courts in the mofussil, created by the Company under its own Regulations, applying Hindu and Muslim personal law, custom and the Regulations.

3. The Company's courts

Civil: the Munsif and Sadar Amin courts; the District Diwani Adalat under a District Judge (Cornwallis Code, 1793); the Provincial Courts of Appeal; and the Sadar Diwani Adalat. Criminal: the Magistrates; the Courts of Circuit (1790, abolished by Bentinck in 1829); and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat. Judges: the Company's covenanted servants, advised by the pandit and the maulvi; Bentinck's reforms of 1831 admitted Indians as Sadar Amin and Principal Sadar Amin. Law: the Regulations, personal law, and justice, equity and good conscience.

4. The differences

7. The amalgamation: the Indian High Courts Act, 1861

Abolished the Supreme Courts and the Sadar Adalats and merged them into one High Court per Presidency, by Letters Patent in 1862 (re-issued 1865): a Chief Justice and not more than fifteen puisne judges, at least one-third barristers and at least one-third covenanted civil servants. Further High Courts could be established; Allahabad followed in 1866.

8. Comment

What was wrong with it.

1. It made a litigant's rights depend on an accident of forum, which is the negation of equality before the law.
2. It produced conflicts of jurisdiction with no arbiter below the King-in-Council, five thousand miles away.
3. It allowed the executive to sit in judgment in the mofussil, since the Company's judges were its own servants.
4. It applied English law to people who did not live by it in the towns, and an unreported and uncertain personal law in the districts.

What can be said for it.

What it did not do. 1861 abolished the duality of courts, not the duality of law. Hindus continued to be governed by Hindu law and Muslims by Muslim law. What ended was the rule that which court you reached decided which law you got, and that is precisely why the reform was accepted where an attempt to impose one substantive law on everyone would have been resisted.

2. The Bar Councils

State Bar Councils (section 3): elected advocates with the Advocate-General ex officio; functions in section 6, namely to admit advocates, maintain the roll, determine cases of misconduct, safeguard advocates' interests, promote law reform and organise legal aid.

Bar Council of India (section 4): members elected by the State Bar Councils, with the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General ex officio; functions in section 7, namely to lay down standards of professional conduct and etiquette, the procedure of disciplinary committees, the standards of legal education, to recognise universities, to hear appeals, and to make rules under section 49.

3. Classes of advocates (section 16)

Senior advocates and other advocates. Designation by the Supreme Court or a High Court with consent, on the ground of ability, standing at the Bar or special knowledge or experience in law, with restrictions on acting and on taking instructions directly from a client.

(b) Reference (section 35). Where a State Bar Council has reason to believe that an advocate on its roll is guilty of professional or other misconduct, it refers the case to its Disciplinary Committee. The reference may follow a complaint or be made suo motu.

(c) Meaning of misconduct. The Act does not define it. The courts treat it as conduct which, by the standards of the profession, is disgraceful or dishonourable or shows the advocate unfit to remain at the Bar, and a breach of the Bar Council of India Rules made under section 49(1)(c) is misconduct. The words "or other misconduct" bring in conduct outside professional work which shows unfitness.

Examples: misappropriation of a client's money; appearing against one's own client; disclosing confidences; gross negligence or failure to attend court; attempting to influence a judge; scandalous allegations against the court; advertising or soliciting work; and taking a contingent fee.

(g) Transfer and time limit. Section 36: the Bar Council of India's Committee has jurisdiction where the advocate is on no State roll and may withdraw a proceeding to itself. Section 36B: a State Bar Council must conclude a proceeding within one year, failing which it stands transferred to the Bar Council of India.

7. Case law

1. Bar Council of Maharashtra v. M. V. Dabholkar (1976): advocates snatching briefs at the court door were guilty of professional misconduct; the profession's standards are set by its public responsibility, not by commercial practice.
2. V. C. Rangadurai v. D. Gopalan (1979): an advocate who deceived an old, deaf client was guilty; the Supreme Court upheld the finding but moderated the punishment, holding that discipline should also reform.
3. Supreme Court Bar Association v. Union of India (1998): the Supreme Court, exercising its contempt jurisdiction, cannot debar an advocate from practice, because that punishment is entrusted by the Act to the Bar Councils. The two jurisdictions are distinct.
4. Ex-Capt. Harish Uppal v. Union of India (2003): lawyers have no right to strike or boycott courts, and such conduct may amount to professional misconduct.

For full marks, cover: the meaning and origin, Dicey's three principles in full, the criticism of each, the modern restatements, the position in India with cases, and an assessment. Since the question names Dicey, his theory must be the centre of the answer and not an introduction to it.

1. Meaning and origin

The Rule of Law means that a country is governed by law and not by the arbitrary will of any person or office: every act of government must be authorised by law, all persons are subject to the same law administered by the same courts, and the legality of official action is determined by an independent judiciary.

The idea is old. Aristotle wrote that it is better for the law to rule than for any one of the citizens; Bracton, in thirteenth-century England, that the King is under no man but under God and the law; Sir Edward Coke, whom Dicey followed, asserted the supremacy of the law against the prerogative in the reign of James I. The French expression la legalite, the principle of legality, carries the same idea.

Third: the constitution is the result of the ordinary law of the land. In England the general principles of the constitution, such as the right to personal liberty or the right of public meeting, are the result of judicial decisions in particular cases brought by private persons before the courts. The constitution is not the source of individual rights but their consequence. Dicey contrasted this with continental constitutions, where rights are declared in a written document and may be suspended by suspending the document.

3. Criticism of Dicey

1. He misunderstood droit administratif. French administrative law, administered by the Conseil d'Etat, was not a system of privilege for officials but a specialised jurisdiction which in many respects gave the citizen a better remedy against the State than English law then did.
2. Discretion is unavoidable. In a welfare State the administration must have discretion; the modern question is not whether discretion exists but whether it is conferred by law, guided by standards, exercised for the purpose given, and reviewable.
3. Equality is never absolute. Officials, diplomats, judges, members of the armed forces and children have always had special rules, and some are necessary.

2. The second is accepted with qualifications: Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws, but India has administrative tribunals under Articles 323A and 323B, and the Constitution grants express immunities to the President and Governors (Article 361) and to legislators for what they say and vote in the House (Articles 105 and 194).
3. The third is reversed: India has a written Constitution which is the source of the ordinary law, not its product.

Constitutional footing: the Preamble; Article 13, voiding laws inconsistent with Fundamental Rights; Article 14; Article 21, requiring a procedure that is fair, just and reasonable; Articles 32 and 226; Article 50; and Article 300, under which the Government may be sued.

Case law:

1. Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973): the basic structure doctrine.
2. Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain (1975): the Rule of Law is part of the basic structure; a constitutional amendment placing the Prime Minister's election beyond judicial scrutiny was struck down.

7. Assessment

Dicey's statement remains the starting point because his first principle, the absence of arbitrary power, is the enduring core of the doctrine and is what courts actually apply. His second requires qualification and his third has not survived at all. In India the doctrine is stronger in law than in Dicey's England, resting on a written constitution, enforceable Fundamental Rights, a basic structure limiting the amending power, and courts that can strike down legislation; and weaker in practice, because of delay, arrears and unequal access to justice. The doctrine is secure as law; its working depends on the administration of justice being made quick and affordable.

2. The pre-independence Commissions

First Law Commission, 1834. Chairman Lord Macaulay, who was also the first Law Member. Its products: the draft Indian Penal Code (1837), Macaulay's own composition, enacted as the Indian Penal Code, 1860; and the Lex Loci Report (1840), recommending a general substantive civil law for persons not governed by Hindu or Muslim law, which produced the Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850.

Second Law Commission, 1853. Constituted in England. It reported on the reform of the judicial establishments, recommending the amalgamation of the Supreme Courts and the Sadar Adalats, carried out by the Indian High Courts Act, 1861; recommended the codification of civil and criminal procedure, producing the Code of Civil Procedure, 1859 and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1861; and advised that Hindu and Muslim personal law should not be codified.

Third Law Commission, 1861. Sat in England for a decade and drafted a series of substantive codes, of which those enacted include the Indian Succession Act, 1865, the Indian Contract Act, 1872, the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 and the Indian Trusts Act, 1882.

Its terms of reference: to review existing laws with a view to repealing the obsolete and reforming the defective; to examine the judicial administration and suggest improvements; to consider references from the Government and the Supreme Court; to examine the law in the light of the Directive Principles, particularly for the elimination of delay and the provision of speedy and cheap justice; and to keep Indian law abreast of developments abroad.

Its method: it selects a subject or receives a reference; issues a consultation paper or questionnaire; consults the Bar, the Bench, universities, the Government and the public; and publishes a report with, in almost every case, a draft Bill annexed. Annexing the Bill is what makes the reports usable, since a Ministry can move the draft as it stands.

4. Major reports and their results

1. Fourteenth Report (1958), Reform of Judicial Administration, in two volumes: the most influential of all. It examined the whole judicial system, from arrears and the quality of the subordinate judiciary to legal education, and is the foundation of the Advocates Act, 1961, of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, and of much of the reform of court administration.

The Commission has submitted more than 280 reports, a substantial proportion of which, commonly put at over half, have been acted on in whole or in part.

5. Limitations

1. It is non-statutory and advisory; it cannot compel the Government to act, and many reports have lain unimplemented for decades.
2. It is constituted by the executive, whose choice its terms of reference and membership are, so its agenda is not independent.
3. There are often long gaps between one Commission and the next, during which nobody is reviewing the statute book.
4. It has no power to review the working of the reforms it recommends.
5. Its recommendations on politically contentious subjects, the Uniform Civil Code, capital punishment, sedition, tend not to be implemented, which is a comment on the political system rather than on the Commission.