Parthakumar, P.M. vs Venugopalan and Others

Pius C. Kuriakose, J.—The challenge in this Writ Petition, filed by the Respondent in Rent Control Petition No. 67/95 of the Rent Control Court, Kozhikode, is against Exts. P-7, P-8 and P-9 orders passed by that Court. Under Ext. P-7 order the Rent Control Court has allowed an application to reopen the case which stood posted for hearing/judgment. Under Ext. P-8 the Court has allowed an application under Order 11, Rule 14 of the CPC and directed the Petitioner to produce certain documents which were sought to be produced. Under Ext. P-9 order the Rent Control Court has allowed an application filed by the Respondents invoking Section 151 and Order 11, Rule 1 of the CPC and permitted the Respondents to serve a few interrogatories to be answered by the Petitioner.

We heard the submissions of Sri K.P. Dandapani, learned Senior Counsel for the Petitioner. Learned Senior Counsel would argue that the Rent Control Court has no power to permit service of interrogatories by a party on his adversary. Referring to Section 23 of the Act 2 of 1965, the learned Senior Counsel submitted that the Rent Control Court cannot assume powers given to the regular Civil Court trying suits other than those which are specifically conferred under that section.

Learned Senior Counsel would further submit that even assuming that there is power to permit service of interrogatories, such power has to be exercised before the commencement of trial and not at the present stage when the entire evidence is over and the case stands posted for judgment. Learned Senior Counsel submitted that it was in response to a remand order passed by the Rent Control Appellate Authority in R.C.A. No. 25/1998 and R.C.A. 26/98 that the Rent Control Court is considering the Rent Control Petition for fresh decision on the question as to whether the Petitioner''s denial of the title claimed by the Respondent is bona fide. The scope of the remand order was only to give opportunity to the Appellants (Respondents in this Writ Petition) to produce certain documents which were sought to be produced before the appellate authority. The applications which are now allowed by the Rent Control Court are all applications beyond the scope of the remand order and for that reason also the impugned orders are illegal.

Despite the persuasive submissions of the learned Senior Counsel, we do not find any warrant for invoking the supervisory jurisdiction of this Court under Article 227 of the Constitution for correcting the impugned orders. We are unable to accept the argument of the learned Senior Counsel that the Rent Control Court does not have power to permit service of interrogatories on the parties before it in terms of Order 11, Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. It is Section 23 of Act 20 of 1965 which confers on the Rent Control Court the powers vested in the Civil Court under the CPC and Section 23 provides as follows:

Summons, etc.- (1) Subject to such conditions and limitations as may be prescribed, the Accommodation Controller, the Rent Control Court and Appellate Authority shall have the powers which are vested in a court under the CPC 1908 (5 of 1908), when trying a suit in respect of the following matters:

(a) discovery and inspection.

(b) to (k) omitted.

It is Order 11 of the CPC which deals with discovery and inspection. Service of interrogatories on the opposite party is one of the modes of discovery envisaged by Order 11 Code of Civil Procedure, as will be clear from the very first rule in that order. We therefore have no doubt in our mind that the Rent Control Court is empowered in terms of Section 23 itself to permit service of interrogatories by parties before that court on their opposite party.

Even otherwise we are of the view that the impugned orders including Ext. P-9 permitting service of interrogatories can be sustained on other reasons also. The learned Senior Counsel is right when he submits that the Rent Control Petition was remanded to the Rent Control Court by the appellate authority for enabling the Respondent/landlord to produce the documents which he had sought to file before the Rent Control Appellate Authority. In fact, the terms of the remand order are clear from the operative portion of the judgment of the Rent Control Appellate Authority which was made available for our perusal by the learned Senior Counsel as directed by us. Those terms are as follows:

The finding of the court below that the denial of title made by the Respondent is genuine and the consequential dismissal of both the applications by the Rent Controller are hereby set aside and both the cases are remanded to the court below for fresh disposal in accordance with law after giving the Appellants an opportunity to adduce further evidence to prove the documents produced by them before this Court and also giving opportunity to the Respondent to give rebuttal evidence if any required.

Pursuant to the above order of remand the landlord filed I.A. 3384/2006 before the Rent Control Court for directing production of few documents. That I.A. was allowed and documents were produced by the Petitioner. One of the documents produced was the true copy of an affidavit which had been filed by the Petitioner along with an earlier I.A. The landlord was examined as P.W. 1. The landlord got that affidavit marked on the side of the present Petitioner as Ext. B-24. The case of the Respondent landlord in I.A. 402/2009 resulting in Ext. P-9 is that while getting copy of the affidavit produced by the Petitioner marked as Ext. B-24, he was under the impression that it was a true copy of the affidavit which had been produced by the Petitioner in response to the direction of the court. According to him, now he has realised, that what has been produced by the Petitioner was not true photocopy of the original of the affidavit, instead it was a coloured photostat copy taken after making certain corrections in the last portion of the affidavit, which was actually filed. In other words, the allegation was that the very production of document subsequently marked Ext. B-24 was a fraud played with the objective of misleading the court and the landlord Respondent.

We do not propose to go into the correctness of the allegation of the Respondent that the production of the documents which was marked by the court as Ext. B-24 is vitiated by fraud. We will only observe that a serious fraud is attributed to the Petitioner by the Respondent and the Rent Control Court rightly thought that I.A. No. 402/09 was filed by the Respondents, for unravelling a fraud allegedly perpetrated by the Petitioner in the matter of production of Ext. B-24. Fraud, if established will vitiate even the most solemn judicial proceeding and fraud will seldom be tolerated by courts of justice. When the endeavour of the Respondent is to unravel a grave fraud alleged against the Petitioner in the matter of production of Ext. B-24 and the Rent Control Court feels that service of interrogatories may be of help in unravelling the alleged fraud, that court will certainly be justified in leaving aside technicalities and permitting such service. It should be remembered that Rent Control Courts are to be governed by principles of justice, equity and good conscience while making decisions [see Rule 11(8) of the statutory rules].

Ext. P-8 order has been passed invoking the powers under Rule 14 of Order XI CPC which incorporates the power of discovery conferred on the Rent Control Court and the document ordered to be produced is the original of the controversial Ext. B-24. Ext. P-7 is only a formal order to reopen the case without which the court could not have passed Exts. P-8 and P-9.

The supervisory jurisdiction of this Court under Article 227 is not invoked in every case. It is to be invoked only when it is seen that there is clear violation of law either statutory or settled or when the impugned order has been passed without jurisdiction. It can also be invoked when the impugned order can be branded as a perverse order. Gauging Exts. P-7, P-8 and P-9 by those parameters, there is no warrant for invocation of the supervisory jurisdiction, which is visitorial in nature.

For all these reasons the Writ Petition fails. The same is dismissed.