Amendment status not verified — confirm the current text below against the official source.
(1) All suits, proceedings in execution of decrees or orders and other proceedings including proceedings by way of appeal or revision, in which a claim to customary or prescriptive rights in a forest is involved and all criminal proceedings in respect of offences which are of the nature described in Chapter XVII of the Indian Penal Code (Central Act XLV of 1860) and arise out of any act done in exercise or assertion of such customary or prescriptive rights, and which stood stayed up to the commencement of this Act or which may be instituted after such commencement, shall continue to stand stayed, or shall stand stayed, as the case may be, and shall not be proceeded with until after the expiration of this Act. [Explanation.- Sub-section (1) shall be construed- (a) in the case of any private forest declared by the State Government to be a forest under clause (iii) of Section 1(2), as if for the words 'which may be instituted after such commencement' occurring in that sub-section, the words, brackets and figures 'which are pending on, or may be instituted after, the date on which the declaration under clause (iii) of Section 1(2) takes effect' had been substituted; and (b) in the case of any private forest in the districts of Malabar and South Kanara having a contiguous area exceeding 100 acres (not being a forest owned by a single person or by more than one person jointly before the commencement of the Madras Preservation of Private Forests (Second Amendment) Act, 1954), as if for the words 'which may be instituted after such commencement' occuring in that sub-section, the words, brackets and figures 'which are pending on, or may be instituted after, the commencement of the Madras Preservation of Private Forests (Second Amendment) Act, 1954' had been substituted]. (2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), the [State] Government may direct that any suit or proceeding or class or classes thereof stayed under sub-section (1) shall be proceeded with from the stage which had been reached when the suit or proceeding was stayed. Added by S. 4 of the Madras Preservation of Private Forests (Second Amendment) Act, 1954 (Madras Act XVIII of 1954). Substituted for the word "Provincial" by the Adaptation Order of 1950.