Jagdish Chandra vs State Of Uttarakhand And Others

Ramesh Ranganathan, CJ

This Special Appeal is preferred against the order passed by the learned Single Judge in Writ Petition (S/S) No. 2475 of 2019 dated 13.11.2019.

The order under appeal records that, after arguing for some time, and on being faced with some legal queries, with regards the effect of earlier

adjudication of the Writ Petition and its impact on the sustainability of the present Writ Petition, learned counsel had sought permission to withdraw the

Writ Petition; and, consequently, the Writ Petition was being dismissed as withdrawn.

Mr. D.K. Joshi, learned counsel for the appellant-writ petitioner, would submit that the grievance of the appellant-writ petitioner, in this Special

Appeal, is limited to the extent that the learned Single Judge, while dismissing the Writ Petition as withdrawn, did not grant the appellant-writ petitioner

liberty to avail his other legal remedies.

It may not be appropriate for this Court to examine, in an intra-Court appeal, whether or not the appellant-writ petitioner had requested the learned

Single Judge to grant liberty to avail his other legal remedies. The Supreme Court, in State of Maharashtra v. Ramdas Shrinivas Nayak : (1982) 2

SCC 463, held thus :

“……When we drew the attention of the learned Attorney-General to the concession made before the High Court, Shri A.K. Sen,

who appeared for the State of Maharashtra before the High Court and led the arguments for the respondents there and who appeared

for Shri Antulay before us intervened and protested that he never made any such concession and invited us to peruse the written

submissions made by him in the High Court. We are afraid that we cannot launch into an enquiry as to what transpired in the High

Court. It is simply not done. Public policy bars us. Judicial decorum restrains us. Matters of judicial record are unquestionable. They

are not open to doubt. Judges cannot be dragged into the arena. “Judgments cannot be treated as mere counters in the game of

litigation.†We are bound to accept the statement of the Judges recorded in their judgment, as to what transpired in court. We cannot

allow the statement of the Judges to be contradicted by statements at the Bar or by affidavit and other evidence. If the Judges say in

their judgment that something was done, said or admitted before them, that has to be the last word on the subject. The principle is

well-settled that statements of fact as to what transpired at the hearing, recorded in the judgment of the court, are conclusive of the

facts so stated and no one can contradict such statements by affidavit or other evidence. If a party thinks that the happenings in court

have been wrongly recorded in a judgment, it is incumbent upon the party, while the matter is still fresh in the minds of the Judges, to

call the attention of the very Judges who have made the record to the fact that the statement made with regard to his conduct was a

statement that had been made in error. That is the only way to have the record corrected. If no such step is taken, the matter must

necessarily end there. Of course a party may resile and an appellate court may permit him in rare and appropriate cases to resile from a concession

on the ground that the concession was made on a wrong appreciation of the law and had led to gross injustice; but, he may not call in question the very

fact of making the concession as recorded in the judgment.

In R v. Mellor : (1858) 7 Cox CC 454 : 6 WR 322 169 ER 1084 Martin, B. was reported to have said:

“We must consider the statement of the learned Judge as absolute verity and we ought to take his statement precisely as a record

and act on it in the same manner as on a record of Court which of itself implies an absolute verity.â€​

In King-Emperor v. Barendra Kumar Ghose : 28 Cal WN 170 : AIR 1924 Cal 257, Page, J. said:

“... these proceedings emphasise the importance of rigidly maintaining the rule that a statement by a learned Judge as to what took

place during the course of a trial before him is final and decisive : It is not to be criticized or circumvented; much less is it to be

exposed to animadversion.â€​

In Sarat Chandra Maiti v. Bibhabati Debi : 34 Cal LJ 302 : AIR 1921 Cal 584 : 66 iC 43 3Sir Asutosh Mookerjee explained what had to be

done:

“... It is plain that in cases of this character where a litigant feels aggrieved by the statement in a judgment that an admission has

been made, the most convenient and satisfactory course to follow, wherever practicable, is to apply to the Judge without delay and ask

for rectification or review of the judgment...â€​

So the Judges’ record is conclusive. Neither lawyer nor litigant may claim to contradict it, except before the Judge himself, but

nowhere else……â€​

(emphasis supplied)

In the light of the law declared by the Supreme Court, in State of Maharashtra v. Ramdas Shrinivas Nayak : (1982) 2 SCC 463, we are

bound to accept the statement, as recorded in the order of the learned Single Judge; and it is impermissible for an appellate Court to examine whether

or not the statements, recorded in the judgment, are true or not, for such statements are conclusive. In case the appellant-writ petitioner is of the view

that his statement has been wrongly recorded by the learned Single Judge, his only remedy is to approach the learned Single Judge seeking review of

the order passed in the Writ Petition.

Granting the appellant-writ petitioner liberty to approach the learned Single Judge and to seek review of the order passed in Writ Petition (S/B) No.

2475 of 2019 dated 13.11.2019, and to be granted liberty to institute other legal proceedings, the Special Appeal fails and is, accordingly, dismissed. No

costs.