GUNDU PRALHAD PATIL Vs. BALU SHAHU VAJANTRI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) a controversy of some seriousness has arisen in this civil revision petition which centres around the narrow issue as to whether an unregistered document can at all be introduced in evidence and if so, what is the extent to which the court can look at or rely on that document. The petitioners who are the plaintiffs before the trial court in original suit No. 517 of 1990, in the course of examination-in-chief tendered a document purporting to be a lease deed. An objection was raised on behalf of the defendants wherein it was pointed out that since the document apparently conferred a long term lease, that it was required to be compulsorily registered and in the absence thereof, that it should not be admitted in evidence. This objection was raised in the course of the evidence and the learned judge has recorded in the proceedings that he heard the learned advocates, that the lease deed was not registered and hence the plaintiffs prayer that the document be admitted in evidence is rejected. It is against this decision that the present revision has been preferred.

(2.) in the course of the hearing, the respondents' learned Advocate has assailed the maintainability of this revision petition. His contention is that this court while exercising its revisional powers under Section 115, C.P.C. is required to confine itself to two broad aspects of law namely the requirement that the revision is preferred against a "decision" or in other words a "case decided" and secondly, that it should be a situation in which a court has wrongly exercised jurisdiction or failed to exercise jurisdiction. Learned Advocate submits that in the present case a procedural objection was raised which was upheld and that effectively, there is no speaking order even passed by the learned trial judge and that under these circumstances, that the revision itself is not maintainable. There is one other aspect of the matter and the learned Advocate for the respondents bases his submission on two earlier decisions of this court in M.C.Modhura v Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and others and K.N.Venkataramaniah Setty v B.N.Srinivasa and others. The principle embodied in those decisions proceeds on the footing that merely because some decision is taken by the trial judge in the course of reception of evidence from time to time, that it is not open to an aggrieved party to stop the trial by preferring a revision application against every such decision. Basically, this court took the view that if every such decision which may involve a certain degree of discretion is permitted to be agitated in a revision by the aggrieved party that there could be interminable hold up of trials and that it would act as a lever to a party who would want to come up to the high court with all sorts of petty disputes and ask for a revision on each of them. This court took the view therefore that in the absence of anything substantial, that it was not open in situations of the aforesaid type to maintain a revision application. If at all any damage or prejudice had occurred, it was open to the party to agitate the matter later on by preferring an appeal. Undoubtedly, there is much substance in this view which deserves to be upheld with a degree of rigorousness, more so because of the obvious tendency on the part of certain litigants who desire to stall and dilate the proceedings. This does not however mean that the law can prescribe a universal bar to a revision being preferred in respect of a substantial objection that has arisen in the course of the recording of evidence. There are always exceptions to situations and these will be governed basically by the gravity of the facts and circumstances. The petitioners' learned Advocate in the present instance has vehemently submitted that in the present trial, the entire foundation of the plaintiffs case rests on the document that was tendered. The learned trial judge has refused to admit it in evidence and the petitioners' learned Advocate submits that it would be too harsh a view for a court to hold that the plaintiffs would have to wait till the suit is dismissed, prefer an appeal, get the order set aside and thereafter go back for a trial. His submission is therefore that if he can demonstrate that the view taken by the learned judge was essentially wrong and that it would create a very substantial and far reaching prejudice to the plaintiffs case, that it would still be open to maintain a revision against that order. His another submission is that it is not always necessary that an order should be a detailed speaking order but that even a short cryptic order wherein the consequences can be disastrous to a litigant would still give rise to a right to move the high court by way of corrective action.

(3.) in this regard, i do need to refer in passing to one more decision which the respondent's learned Advocate sought to rely on namely the case in ILR 1990(2) kar. 1133 (sic). That was a case in which the court was concerned with an unstamped document and the court had occasion to observe that corrective action under the Stamp Act is permissible insofar as the document could always be stamped after paying the penalty and could still be relied upon by the party. Whereas in the case of an unregistered document, Section 49 of Registration Act, 1908 prescribes certain limitations with regard to the manner in which a court can use such a document, the respondents' learned Advocate submitted on the basis of this ruling that the decision prescribes a total bar to the reception in evidence of an unregistered document. I am unable to subscribe to that view because there is no parallel between an unregistered and unstamped document and the decision in question is distinguishable as far as the present facts are concerned.