Bankey Behari Singh and Others vs Ramsaran Gope and Others

Agarwala, C.J.—This appeal under the Letters Patent is by the plaintiffs. The relevant facts are as follows: In execution of a decree for rent the plaintiffs, who are co-sharer landlords, purchased the judgment-debtors'' holding and obtained delivery of possession. The plaintiffs co-sharers were impleaded in the suit in which this decree was passed. In 1939, an application was made u/s 3, Bakasht Restoration Act, 1938, for restoration of the tenants to possession. This application was granted. The appellants then sued for a declaration that the order of restoration was a nullity and for recovery of possession and mesne profits. Alternatively, they claimed arrears of rent for the years 1347-1350. The suit was decreed at first instance, and this decision was confirmed on appeal. The defendants preferred a second appeal to this Court which resulted? in the dismissal of the suit by Ray J. of the several grounds on which the appellants challenged the order of restoration, the only one with which we are now concerned is whether the order was ultra vires. It is contended on behalf of the appellants that the order was ultra vires the officer who made it because the application for restoration was not made on behalf of all the dispossessed tenants, and also because the land in dispute was not Bakasht as it had been purchased by only one of the co-sharer landlords in execution of the rent decree.

In so far as it is relevant for present purposes Section 3 is as follows:

(1) A raiyat, whose holding or a portion of whose holding was sold in...execution of a decree for arrears of rent and was purchased by the landlord of such holding and is in the possession or under the control of the said landlord, may make an application to the Collector for the restoration to him of such holding or portion.

(2) Every application made under Sub-section (1) shall be in the prescribed form and shall contain the following particulars, namely;

(i) the name of the landlord of the holding by whom it was purchased;

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(v) such other particulars as may be prescribed.

The prescribed form referred to in Sub-section (2) requires the name of the applicant to be stated and at the bottom of the form the applicant''s signature. When the application does not comply with the requirements of Sub-section (2) the Collector is empowered by Section 4(2) to allow the defect to be remedied then and there, or within a time to be fixed by him. The grounds on which the landlord may object to the application are enumerated in Section 6. If the application for restoration is not dismissed summarily on grounds which need not now be stated, the Collector is required by Section 8(1) to determine inter alia the land which is liable to be restored to the raiyat under the provisions of the Act. Section 10(a) provides:

When the Collector directs under any of the provisions of this Act that only a part of the holding or portion sold shall be restored to the raiyat, he shall, if the raiyat and the landlord of such holding do not agree as regards the specific plots to be restored, determine the plots which shall be restored to the raiyat.

By Section 12(b) it is provided that:

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any other law or in anything having the-force of law or in any custom, when any land is restored to a raiyat under the provisions of this Act, all such rights as the raiyat had in respect of the said land and the incidents thereof before its sale shall revive.

Every order passed by the Collector under the Act is declared by Section 22 to be final, and a civil Court is prohibited from entertaining any suit or application to vary or set aside any decision or order given or passed under the Act. The scheme of the Act is to provide a complete code for dealing with applications for restoration '' of bakasht lands. The finality of an order made on an application under the Act cannot, therefore, be questioned in a civil Court except on the narrow ground that the officer who made it had no jurisdiction to do so. A tribunal cannot, of course, confer jurisdiction upon itself by a wrong decision of law or fact, except in cases where the determination of questions on which jurisdiction is founded has been entrusted by the Legislature to the tribunal itself. Where an enactment provides a complete procedure for the determination of all questions of law or fact, including questions on which the jurisdiction of the tribunal depends, and its decision is declared to be final, it is impossible to question the validity of the order unless it is evident from the record itself that the tribunal had no jurisdiction in the matter. For the appellants reference was made to an observation by Farewell L.J. in The King v. The Assessment Committee of the Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch (1910) 2 K.B. 859 :

No tribunal of inferior jurisdiction can by its own decision finally decide on the question of the existence or extent of such jurisdiction; such question is always subject to review by the High Court, which does not permit the inferior tribunal either to usurp a jurisdiction which it does not possess, whether at all or to the extent claimed, or to refuse to exercise a jurisdiction which it has and ought to exercise. Subjection in this respect to the High Court is a necessary and inseparable incident to all tribunals of limited jurisdiction; for the existence of the limit necessitates an authority to determine and enforce it; it is a contradiction in terms to create a tribunal with limited jurisdiction and unlimited power to determine such. limit at its own will and pleasure--such a tribunal would be autocratic, not limited--and it IB immaterial whether the decision of the inferior tribunal on the question of the existence or non-existence of its own jurisdiction is founded on law or fact; a Court with jurisdiction confined to the city of London cannot extend such jurisdiction by finding as a fact that Pioeadilly Circus is in the ward of Chepe.

This observation is of no assistance to the appellants. It is obvious that if a Court with jurisdiction confined to the City of London purported to exercise jurisdiction outside the City of London, that is a fact which would be apparent from the record. The question of the right of a civil Court to question the decision of a revenue Court on matters within the cognizance of a revenue Court has recently been considered by a Full Bench of this Court in Ramranbijaya Prasad Singh Vs. Ram Kawal Upadhya and Others, . The facts of that case were that a Revenue Officer entertain, ed and granted a second application for reduction of rent within a period of fifteen years from a previous order reducing the rent despite the bar imposed by Section 113, Tenancy Act. The question was whether the second order was ultra vires the revenue Court. The existence of the first order had not been brought to the Court''s notice by the second application which was under consideration. It was held that, as one of the questions to be decided by the revenue Court before it could exercise jurisdiction to reduce the rent was whether there had been a reduction within a period of fifteen years, it followed that the revenue Court had jurisdiction to decide this question, and that its decision on that point was final. The law on the subject has been concisely stated by Lord Watson in Ledgard v. Bull 13 I.A. 134.

When the Judge has no inherent jurisdiction over the subject-matter of a suit, the parties cannot, by their mutual consent, convert it into a proper judicial propels, although they may constitute the Judge their arbiter, and be bound by his decision on the merits when these are submitted to him. But there are numerous authorities which establish that when, in a cause which the Judge is competent to try, the parties without objection join issue, and go to trial upon the merits, the defendant cannot subsequently dispute his jurisdiction upon the grounds that there were irregularities in the initial procedure, which, if objected to at the time, would have led to the dismissal of the suit.

The relevancy of these observations to the facts of the present case is obvious when those facts are considered. The holding sold in execution of the decree, at which the appellants were the purchasers, was owned by two brothers Ramsaran and Shyamlal, who were separate. In the application for restoration the names of both these appeared as applicants. But the application bore the signature of Ramsaran only. It has, therefore, been the case of the plaintiffs-appellants that the application was not on behalf of all the raiyats who owned the holding prior to the execution sale. This contention is dearly negatived by the fact that the application ex facie purported to be on behalf of both the raiyats. The fact that only one signed it was certainly a defect which the Revenue Officer should have required to be remedied u/s 4. This formal defect, however, cannot be regarded as sufficient to oust the jurisdiction of the Revenue Court in a matter which it had jurisdiction to entertain and decide. In this connection ''it is sufficient to refer to the decision of the ''Privy Council in Mohini Mohun Das v. Buddan Saha Das 17 Cal. 680. There a plaint was signed and verified by only one of several plaintiffs. It was held that there was no justification for holding that a person was not to be treated as a co-plaintiff merely because he has omitted to sign the plaint. But the contention of the appellants in the present case goes further than that. The defence of the defendants on this point was, first, that there had been a previous partition between the two brothers as the result of which the holding belonged entirely to Ramsaran, or, alternatively, that if there had been no partition, Ramsaran was the karta of the joint family and signed the application in a representative capacity. Both these contentions have been negatived by the Courts of fact below, and the question must, therefore, be viewed on the basis that the two brothers were separate, but that there had been no actual partition of the holding between them. In these circum-stances, Ramsaran cannot be regarded as a person authorized to sign on behalf of his brother unless he had express authority to do so, of which there is no evidence. What is to be considered, therefore, is whether this circumstance ousted the jurisdiction of the Revenue Court to entertain the application for restoration. The flowing facts constitute the foundation of the Revenue Court to make an order for restoration: (1) that a holding or portion of a holding has been sold in execution of a decree for arrears of rent; (2) that the purchaser was the landlord of the holding; and (3) that at the time of the application for restoration the landlord was in possession or control of the holding. It is only when this combination of facts exists that the Revenue Court is empowered to order restoration to the dispossessed raiyat or raiyats, and it follows that the Revenue Court had jurisdiction to decide each of these questions, and that being so; his decision, by reason of Section 22, is final and cannot be challenged in another Court. The landlord was entitled to an opportunity to contest the application for restoration oh the ground that the application was not on behalf of both the dispossessed raiyats. He had such an opportunity and did not contest the application on that ground, and, therefore, as pointed out by Lord Watson in the case already referred to, he cannot now dispute the Revenue Court''s jurisdiction upon the ground that there was an irregularity in the initial procedure which, if objected to at the time, would have led to the dismissal of the application.

The next question that arises is whether the Revenue Court had jurisdiction to entertain the application for restoration in view of the fact that the holding was not purchased at the execution sale by the entire body of co sharer land-lords, but only by the appellants.'' It has been contended that in view of the definition of "land, lord" given in the Act, restoration can only be granted when the purchase is by the entire body of landlords. That contention is, I think, negatived by the language of Sub-section (2)(1) of Section 3 which requires, among the particulars to be stated in an application for restoration, the name of the landlord of the holding by whom it was purchased. The last five words of this clause would have been unnecessary if it had been intended by the Legislature that restoration should be granted only when the purchase is by the entire body of landlords. This was the view taken in Suryamohan Thakur Vs. Arjun Rai and Others, , where it was held that the definition of landlord as given in Section 3(4), Tenancy Act which, by virtue of Section 2, Restoration of Bakasht Act, applies also to the expression as used in the latter Act, applies to each individual of a number of co-sharer proprietors or tenure-holders immediately under whom as a body the tenant held.

The result is that the appeal must be dismissed except to this extent that the plaintiffs are entitled to a decree for rent for the years 1347-1350 at the rate claimed. There will be no order for, costs of this appeal.

Meredith J.

I agree.