Chintaman Mahto and Others vs Babu Amar Singh and Others

Wort, J.—In this appeal two questions are raised: one is the competency of the appeal to the Judicial Commissioner of Chota Nagpur and therefore to this Court; and the other with regard to the scope of the issue to be tried in the suit which was a suit for rent by the respondent. Certain persons who are represented in this Court by Mr. De were joined as intervenors.

The suit was commenced before the Deputy I Collector of Chota Nagpur, and in the ordinary course, would have been tried by him with the rights given in such a suit under the provisions of the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act. But by reason of the question of, title which was raised by the introduction of the intervenor, the case was transferred; by the Deputy Collector under the Proviso to Section 139 of the Act. I notice in passing that the words of that Proviso are of the widest possible terms; it makes no condition and gives apparently no limits. It provides that the Deputy Commissioner may transfer to the Civil Court any class of suits or a particular suit; and I assume in the circumstances, as I have already stated, that the reason of this transfer was the question of title which was this.

The plaintiff had purchased the property and redeemed a person who was in the position of a zarpeshgidar. His name is Chohan Mahto and the question was whether the defendant, tenants had paid the rent to him or to the clients of Mr. De who claimed that they were the zarpeshgidars, that they lent the money in the name of Chohan Mahto. This question was raised under Issue 1, perhaps an Issue which is not very aptly expressed; the Issue was--"Does the relationship of landlord and tenant exist between the parties?" Evidence was gone into and in the trial Court the present appellants succeeded, but the decision of the trial Court was reversed by the Judicial Commissioner.

Mr. De argues that although the suit was transferred, it was governed by the terms of the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act, that is to say, there was an appeal not from the Munsif''s decision to the Judicial Commissioner but from the decision of the Munsif to the Deputy Commissioner and it suffered from all the disabilities and restrictions of a rent suit under the Chota Nagpur Ten. ancy Act.

In my judgment it is an argument which cannot possibly be accepted under any circumstances. The argument in effect is this: that although, to use a colloquialism, the Deputy Collector, by reason of this question of title, had wiped his hands off the suit and put it into the hands of the Civil Court, yet the Civil Court was bound not by the statutes and by the CPC governing suits in that Court, but by the restrictions of the Court which had transferred the matter.

In my opinion the matter is governed by the principle laid down by their Lordships of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in AIR 1934 81 (Privy Council) where their Lordships say at p. 161 of the Report as follows:

The respondent raised a preliminary objection to the competency of the present appeal maintaining that u/s 4, Sub-section 2, Provincial Insolvency Act, the decision of the District Court was final subject only to a limited right of appeal to the High Court u/s 75, Sub-section 2, any right of further appeal being thereby excluded. But in their Lordships'' opinion this objection is not maintainable in view of the decision of this Board in Secretary of State v. Chelikani Rama Rao A.I.R (1916) . P.C. 21 in which a similar objection was taken.

It was held that when such a right of appeal is given to ordinary Courts of the country, the procedure, orders and decrees of that Court will be governed by the ordinary rules of the Code of Civil Procedure. That, in my judgment, if I may say so, is a weaker case than the one which I have before me. In that case it was held that once it gets into a Court, the rules of that Court and that Court alone will govern the matter and there will be no further right of appeal. This case is stronger than that case by reason of the fact that it was not an appeal to the Civil Court, but it was a transfer out and out; and once the case got there, the suit was governed by the rules of the procedure of that Court. In my judgment that point fails.

Now, it has been held in a number of cases and I myself have been a party to a number of decisions of this Court that in a suit of this kind tried by the Deputy Commissioner, the only issue is--whether the rent has been paid, and if paid, the person to whom and under what conditions it has been paid. I refer to Section 177, Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act. To put the matter in other words, the only issue possible in a case of that kind is the issue which the Section indicates. But this case was transferred for the purpose of deciding the question of title. There was nothing to prevent a suit by an intervenor in an ordinary Civil Court trying a question of title, and in my judgment Section 177 applies only to a case tried before the Deputy Commissioner. That Section provides:

When in any suit before a Deputy Commissioner under this Act between a landlord and a tenant, etc.

The answer to the argument is that this was not a suit before the Deputy Commissioner although the suit had commenced in that Court but had been transferred. In my judgment both the points fail and I am supported in my view of the first point and to some extent of the second point, in addition to the decision of the Privy Council, from which I get support by inference, directly by the decision of the Calcutta High Court in Kshirod Gobinda v. Rajendra Narain A.I.R (1918) . Cal. 556.

The appeal is dismissed with costs, Leave to appeal is refused.