Two statutes are in pari materia when they relate to the same person or thing, or to the same class of persons or things, and use their words in the same sense. The doctrine of pari materia lets a court read them together as one system.
In a 2025 ruling, in Daivshala v. Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd., the Supreme Court held that a night watchman who died on his motorcycle on the way to a 3 a.m. shift had met with an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. The Court got there by reading the Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923 alongside the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948, because both are beneficial social security statutes and both turn on the same operative phrase. Section 51E of the ESI Act deems a commuting accident to arise out of employment, and the Court carried that meaning across to Section 3 of the 1923 Act. The 1923 Act itself says nothing about commuting.
This article sets out when the doctrine of pari materia applies and how far it reaches.
Everything in this doctrine turns on a single question: are two Acts close enough that a court will read them as one system? A brief makes the test easier to see than a definition does. Suppose a junior defends a contractor prosecuted under a special anti-corruption statute which uses the phrase “public servant” without defining it, while an older Act on a neighbouring subject defines the same phrase, and defines it narrowly.
The junior’s instinct is to borrow the narrow definition, because it would put the client outside the section. Whether that borrowing works has nothing to do with how similar the two definitions look on the page. It turns on whether the two Acts share an object and an operation, and on whether each uses the phrase in the same sense.
If the older Act was passed to regulate something else entirely, the borrowing fails and the wider meaning in the prosecuting statute stands. That is the line the Supreme Court has drawn, and the sections below show where it falls.
Statutes in pari materia against statutes that merely share a subject
Statutes are in pari materia when they relate to the same person or thing, or to the same class of persons or things, and sharing a subject is not enough to get them there. The Supreme Court adopted that definition from Sutherland’s Statutory Construction in Shah & Co., Bombay v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1967 SC 1877. Craies supplies the consequence in the same passage: Acts of that kind “are to be taken together as forming one system, and as interpreting and enforcing each other”.
How old can the other statute be, and does it have to still be in force? Age does not matter, and neither does repeal. The rule goes back to Lord Mansfield in R v. Loxdale (1758) 97 ER 394, which the Supreme Court reproduced in Prabhudas Damodar Kotecha v. Manharbala Jeram Damodar: statutes in pari materia count “though made at different times, or even expired and not referring to each other”, and they “shall be taken and construed together as one system and as explanatory to each other”.
Reading two Acts as one system does not merge them. Each keeps its own field of operation, its own penalties and its own machinery. What the doctrine gives a court is an aid to construction, so that an ambiguous word in one Act can be settled by the way the legislature used the same word in the other. That makes it a different tool from casus omissus, which asks what a court should do when the words of a statute do not reach the facts at all.
The two-limb test for the doctrine of pari materia
The test has two limbs, and an argument has to clear both. The first limb asks about subject matter, and the Supreme Court put it this way in State of Gujarat v. Mansukhbhai Kanjibhai Shah, AIR 2020 SC 2203: two statutes are in pari materia when they “deal with the same subject-matter” and the “words employed in legislations are used in identical sense”.
The second limb asks what each Act was passed to do. Two statutes can sit on the same shelf and still pull in different directions, and where their purpose, operation and object diverge, the doctrine has nothing to work on. Most arguments die here, because counsel pleads the overlap and leaves the purpose unexamined.
Scope does the same work as purpose. In State of Punjab v. Okara Grain Buyers Syndicate Ltd., AIR 1964 SC 669, the Supreme Court held that where two pieces of legislation are of different scopes, they cannot be said to be in pari materia. A wide regulatory Act and a narrow remedial one will fail the test even though a reader could describe both in the same sentence.
What does a court want to see before it accepts the argument? Point to the same class of persons or things in both Acts, then to the same phrase used in the same sense, then to a shared object visible in the preamble and in the operative provisions. “Both Acts mention employees” is not an argument, because employees appear in a dozen statutes drafted for a dozen different purposes.
Underneath all of this sits a presumption of continuity. The legislature is taken to know the law already in force on the subject, and to use its established terminology when it legislates again on the same ground. External aids of this kind sit outside the statute being construed, which is why a court reaches for them only once the internal aids have failed to settle the meaning, and it is why the way a legislature drafts is itself evidence a court will use.
Where the pari materia argument has failed
The clearest failures are the ones where the two Acts look related. In Shah & Co., counsel argued that Section 15 of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947 should limit the requisitioning power in Section 6 of the Bombay Land Requisition Act, 1948. Both statutes deal with premises in Bombay, and both affect who may occupy them.
The Supreme Court held they were not in pari materia. One Act regulates the relationship between landlord and tenant; the other lets the State requisition premises for a public purpose. Section 15 therefore could not cut down Section 6.
The Court took the same line in July 2026 in Mahinder v. Puran Singh, 2026 INSC 698. It was argued that Section 15 of the Punjab Pre-emption Act, 1913 and Section 22 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 were substantially the same provision, since both deal with a right of pre-emption. The Court held that they are not, because the Punjab provision ran on consanguinity and reached distant relations, tenants and co-owners, while Section 22 reaches only Class-I heirs who inherited from the same intestate.
The consequence mattered to the appellants. Atam Prakash, which had struck down the Punjab provision, could not be carried across to Section 22, and the appeal was dismissed. Pari materia was a supporting point in Mahinder rather than the ratio, since the appeal turned on legislative competence and the scope of Section 22, but the reasoning is a clean illustration of the second limb.
Reading Acts in pari materia against importing a definition wholesale
Reading two Acts in pari materia lets a court use the language of one to settle an ambiguous phrase in the other, and it does not let the court lift a definition out of one Act and drop it into another. The Supreme Court stated the permitted use in Daivshala v. Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd., 2025 INSC 904: “where statutes in pari materia serve a common object in absence of any provision indicating to the contrary, it is permissible for a court of law to ascertain the meaning of the provision in the enactment by comparing its language with the other enactment relating to the same subject matter”. The words doing the limiting there are “in absence of any provision indicating to the contrary”. A definition clause in the receiving Act, or a deeming provision pointing the other way, shuts the door before the comparison is ever reached.
The mechanics in Daivshala are worth following, because they show the doctrine doing something the Court could not have done without it. The Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923 and the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948 are both beneficial social security legislation, and both turn on the phrase “arising out of and in the course of employment”. Section 51E of the ESI Act deems an accident on the way to or from work to satisfy that phrase. The Court treated Section 51E as clarificatory, gave it retrospective effect, and carried its meaning across to Section 3 of the 1923 Act.
That does not make every commuting accident compensable. The claimant still has to establish a nexus between the employment and the circumstances, time and place of the accident. On the facts, the Commissioner had awarded Rs 3,26,140 with interest, the Bombay High Court had reversed that award on the authority of ESI Corpn. v. Francis De Costa, and the Supreme Court restored it. Francis De Costa had placed a commuting accident outside the phrase, and Section 51E is the provision that changed that position.
What a court may not import from an Act that is not in pari materia
A definition drafted for one Act does not travel to another whose scheme it was never written for. In Mansukhbhai Kanjibhai Shah, a trustee of a deemed university faced prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and the defence wanted the word “University” to carry the narrower meaning it has under the UGC Act. The Supreme Court refused, holding the two statutes “completely distinct in their purpose, operation and object”: the UGC Act coordinates standards in higher education, while the PC Act exists to reach corruption.
The practical rule this leaves counsel with is narrow. A definition travels only where the receiving Act shares the scheme that definition was drafted for, and the enquiry runs on what each Act was passed to achieve rather than on how closely the two definitions read. Where the schemes differ, the borrowed meaning would cut down the receiving Act by an accident of drafting somewhere else, and that is the outcome the Court was refusing. A trustee of a deemed university therefore stays inside the reach of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The doctrine of pari materia against legislation by incorporation
Where a later Act incorporates provisions of an earlier one, the borrowed provisions freeze, and a later amendment to the earlier Act does not follow them across. The doctrine of pari materia is one of four exceptions to that freeze. Both the rule and its exceptions come from State of Madhya Pradesh v. M.V. Narasimhan, (1975) 2 SCC 377.
The Court put the rule this way: “Where a subsequent Act incorporates provisions of a previous Act then the borrowed provisions become an integral and independent part of the subsequent Act and are totally unaffected by any repeal or amendment in the previous Act.” The rule only bites where the later Act incorporates the earlier provision rather than merely referring to it, because a reference points at the earlier Act as it stands from time to time. Four situations then take a case outside the freeze. The two Acts may be supplemental to each other, or they may be in pari materia, or the later Act may be left “wholly unworkable and ineffectual” without the amendment, or the amending Act may apply itself to the later Act expressly or by necessary intendment.
This is the doctrine’s highest-value use, because it decides whether an amendment reaches a borrowed provision. It is also where secondary sources most often go wrong on Narasimhan. The Court did not hold that the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Penal Code are in pari materia. It recorded that no authority had been cited “in support of the proposition that the Act, namely, the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Penal Code are statutes in pari materia so as to form one system”, and it relied on the supplemental limb instead.
The result still went against the accused. The amended Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which widened “public servant” to take in employees of government companies, was read into the Prevention of Corruption Act. The respondent was therefore a public servant, and the conviction stood, with the sentence reduced to the period already served.
Pari materia in the shift from the CrPC to the BNSS
Anyone working with the new criminal codes runs into the same question: can a provision carried over with a new number be read together with its predecessor? In Chowgule and Company Pvt. Ltd. v. Public Prosecutor, State of Goa, 2024:BHC-GOA:1243, decided on 2 August 2024, the Bombay High Court at Goa treated the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and Section 531 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 as pari materia, and read Section 531(2)(a) as saving pending matters. An investigation begun before 1 July 2024 therefore continues under the CrPC.
That reasoning reaches well beyond one savings clause. Where the BNSS reproduces a CrPC provision in substance, the two clear both limbs of the test, and the case law built on the old section keeps its value under the new numbering. Where the drafter changed the substance, as happened in several places when the IPC became the BNS, the limbs part company and the older authority has to be argued rather than assumed.
Frequently asked questions
Is the doctrine of pari materia an internal aid or an external aid to interpretation?
It is an external aid. Internal aids sit inside the statute being construed, in its preamble, its definition clause, its marginal notes, its provisos and its schedules. Pari materia sends the court outside that statute altogether, to another enactment on the same subject, which is why a court turns to it only after the internal aids have failed to settle the meaning.
Can a repealed or expired statute be read in pari materia with a current one?
Yes. The rule taken from R v. Loxdale (1758) 97 ER 394, and reproduced by the Supreme Court in Prabhudas Damodar Kotecha, covers statutes in pari materia “though made at different times, or even expired and not referring to each other”. A repealed Act can therefore still explain the sense in which the legislature used a phrase, provided the two limbs of the test are satisfied.
Are the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act in pari materia?
No, and this is the point most secondary sources get backwards. In M.V. Narasimhan, (1975) 2 SCC 377, the Supreme Court recorded that no authority had been cited for treating the two as statutes in pari materia so as to form one system. It applied a different exception, that the two Acts are supplemental to each other, and read the amended definition of “public servant” in Section 21 of the Penal Code into the Prevention of Corruption Act on that footing.
What defeats a pari materia argument in court?
Two things. Different scope defeats it, which is what the Supreme Court held in Okara Grain Buyers Syndicate, and a different object, purpose and operation defeats it, which is what it held in Mansukhbhai Kanjibhai Shah. Shah & Co. and Mahinder v. Puran Singh are the worked examples: in both, the two provisions looked related on the surface and failed once the court examined what each was there to do.
References
- Daivshala and Ors. v. Oriental Insurance Company Ltd. and Anr., 2025 INSC 904 (Supreme Court of India, 29 July 2025); reported at 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 748 and 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1534 (on Section 3 of the Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923 and Section 51E of the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948).
- Mahinder and Ors. v. Puran Singh, 2026 INSC 698 (Supreme Court of India, 14 July 2026) (on Section 15 of the Punjab Pre-emption Act, 1913 and Section 22 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956).
- State of Gujarat v. Mansukhbhai Kanjibhai Shah, AIR 2020 SC 2203 (Supreme Court of India, 27 April 2020) (on the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and the University Grants Commission Act, 1956).
- Shah & Co., Bombay v. State of Maharashtra and Anr., AIR 1967 SC 1877 (Supreme Court of India, 6 April 1967) (on Section 15 of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947 and Section 6 of the Bombay Land Requisition Act, 1948).
- State of Madhya Pradesh v. M.V. Narasimhan, (1975) 2 SCC 377 (Supreme Court of India, 15 July 1975); AIR 1975 SC 1835 (on Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947).
- State of Punjab v. Okara Grain Buyers Syndicate Ltd., AIR 1964 SC 669 (Supreme Court of India, 15 November 1963).
- Prabhudas Damodar Kotecha and Ors. v. Manharbala Jeram Damodar and Anr. (Supreme Court of India, 13 August 2013), reproducing R v. Loxdale (1758) 97 ER 394.
- Chowgule and Company Pvt. Ltd. v. The Public Prosecutor, State of Goa, 2024:BHC-GOA:1243 (High Court of Bombay at Goa, 2 August 2024) (on Section 531 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023).
- Sutherland, Statutory Construction, and Craies on Statute Law, both as adopted by the Supreme Court in Shah & Co., AIR 1967 SC 1877.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified advocate before acting on any statutory provision or judgment discussed above.