Lansdowne Bridge Act, 1892

The Lansdowne Bridge Act, 1892 is a narrow, historical law confirming the government's authority to charge tolls on the Lansdowne Bridge over the Indus River at Sukkur — a bridge built and maintained on the North-Western Railway line at government expense. It was passed because an earlier toll-authorising law had been repealed in a way that raised doubts over whether anyone still had the legal power to levy tolls on this bridge.

Section 2 removes that doubt: despite the earlier repeal, the (Provincial) Government may set toll rates for the bridge — not exceeding the rates in the schedule of the earlier repealed law — and place toll collection under whatever management arrangement it thinks fit, applying the older law's collection and recovery provisions as if they were written directly into this Act.

Section 3 validates tolls that had already been collected on the bridge before this Act, under the authority of the Federal or the former Bombay Provincial Government, treating them as if they had been properly collected under the law as though it were never repealed.

Section 4 broadens the Act's reach: where any other public road or bridge has been built and is maintained at Federal or Provincial Government expense, and no other adequate toll-collection law applies to it, the Provincial Government can extend this Act's toll mechanism to that road or bridge by Gazette notification, treating it as if it were named alongside the Lansdowne Bridge from the start. This is a very old, narrowly-scoped infrastructure-financing law.