Sarman Lal vs Khuban and Others

Blair and Burkitt, JJ.—This application for revision is based upon the allegation that the Small Cause Court, which is the Court of original jurisdiction, bad tried and wrongly decided a question of limitation. We are asked now-in this application u/s 25 of Act IX of 1887 to re-open that question in revision. Our attention has been called to the Full Bench judgment of this Court in this case in answer to a reference by one of our number. It was there argued that Section 25 of the Small Cause Court Act was not simply co-extensive with Section 622 of the Code of Civil Procedure. We all were of opinion that in the exercise of our discretion we ought to apply to cases brought before us u/s 25 of Act IX of 1887 the general principle embodied in Section 622 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The ruling of the Court was itself to this effect, that the considerations to be applied to such an application for revision as this did not differ materially from those applicable u/s 622, and which were applied before the decision of the case Amir Hassan Khan v. Sheo Baksh Singh by their Lordships of the Privy Council. The case was reported in ILR Cal 6. It appears to us that we have no clear and satisfactory guidance from the decided cases as to what was held by this Court to be the scope of Section 622 before the clear and definite ruling in that case. It seems quite certain that there was no consistent course of decision in this Court. Abundance of rulings can be found, some entertaining wider and some entertaining narrower views of the limitations imposed by that section. We consider the closer and stricter interpretation to be most in accord with the intention of the Legislature, and we therefore in our discretion refuse to try in revision, and to reopen the questions of law and fact which have in the exercise of its jurisdiction boon decided upon evidence by a Court whose decision upon such a point has been made final by law. We reject the application.