Statute Law Repeals - Law Commission - Ministry of Justice

Calcutta and South Eastern Railway Company
3.26 The Calcutta and South Eastern Railway Company came into being in 1857. In
order to undertake its task of constructing and operating various main and branch
lines, it promoted what was to be become the Calcutta and South-eastern
Railway Act 1857. 25 The Act authorised, amongst other things, the company to
contract with the East India Company so as to facilitate the railway undertaking
and linked purposes (and to permit the transfer of the undertaking to the East
India Company “at any time”), 26 and it also required the company to establish an
Indian office for handling share transactions and to maintain proper registers of
share and stockholders and loan instruments at that office.
3.27 The contract of guarantee between the railway company and the Secretary of
State for India 27 was agreed in March 1859, 28 and the lines opened by stages:
Calcutta (today Kolkata) to Chappahattee in 1861, and on to Port Canning in
1862. In 1868 the company sold the line to the Indian government (management
then being leased to the Eastern Bengal Railway), and the company was
dissolved in March 1870.
3.28 As a consequence the 1857 Act no longer has a purpose and can be repealed.
Ceylon Railway Company
3.29 The Ceylon Railway Company was formed as a joint stock company in 1847 to
establish and operate a railway line from Colombo to Kandy in the British colony
of Ceylon (today the state of Sri Lanka), principally to facilitate the local planters.
By 1856 the company required ancillary powers, which it sought and obtained in
the Ceylon Railway Company’s Act 1856. 29 The Act reincorporated the company
as a legal entity within Ceylon and beyond, rearranged the company’s share
capital scheme, and authorised the company to contract with the “local
Government of the Island of Ceylon” for the construction and operation of
railways and telegraphs (and for subsequent government acquisition of the
railway system).
25 20 & 21 Vict. c.xxiii (1857) (“The 1857 Act”).
26 The 1857 Act, s 4.
27 Following the Great Rebellion in India of 1857 (otherwise known as the Indian Mutiny), the
British Crown assumed direct governance of British India in 1858: see the Government of
India Act 1858 (21 & 22 Vict. c.106), which transferred government of the Indian territories
from the East India Company to the Queen as sovereign, and created the office of
Secretary of State for India in the United Kingdom who was to operate through a new
Council of India. The East India Company was formally dissolved in 1874.
28 The company received a 5% return on its capital investment.
29 19 & 20 Vict. c.ci (1856).
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