VISHESH KUMAR Vs. SHANTI PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal by special leave and the four associated special leave petitions question the dismissal by the High Court of Allahabad of five revision petitions filed under Section 115, Code of Civil Procedure, on the ground that they are not maintainable.

(2.) Although the five cases before us must be considered in the context of their individual facts it is desirable to appreciate the relevant jurisdictional structure of revisional power enjoyed by the High Court from time to time. In 1970, the provisions of Section 115, Code of Civil Procedure, read:

(3.) A schematic analysis of the judicial hierarchy within a State indicates that the High Court, as the apex court in the hierarchy, has been entrusted, not only with the supreme appellate power exercised within the State but also, by virtue of Section 115, the power to remove, in order to prevent a miscarriage of justice, any jurisdictional error committed by a subordinate court in those cases where the error cannot be corrected by resort to its appellate jurisdiction. The two salient features of revisional jurisdiction under Section 115 are on the one hand, the closely limited grounds on which the court is permitted to interfere and on the other, the wide expanse of discretion available to the court, when it decides to interfere, in making an appropriate order. The intent is that so serious an error as one of jurisdiction, if committed by a subordinate court, should not remain uncorrected, and should be removed and the record healed of the infirmity by an order shaped to reinstate the proceeding within the proper jurisdictional confines of the subordinate court. It is a power of superintendence, and fittingly it has been conferred in terms enabling the High Court to exercise it, not only when moved by an aggrieved person, but also suo motu. While considering the nature and scope of the revisional jurisdiction, it is necessary however, to advert to the prime circumstance that in civil cases the jurisdiction has been entrusted to the highest court of the State, demonstrating that broadly the order under Sec. 115 is to be regarded, in the absence of anything else, as a final order within the state judiciary.