HARI DUTT SHARMA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) -Arguments on the Objection pertaining to the territorial jurisdiction of this Court had been heard on 29.10.2004. Counsel for the Respondent have raised this very question today.

(2.) It is not in dispute that at the material time the Petitioner was posted at Mumbai. The First Information Report (FIR) has been lodged in Bombay; the Petitioner has been charge sheeted in Mumbai and the Trial was in progress in that city until Interim Orders were passed by this Court. Learned Counsel for the Petitioner, however, submits that the Petitioner now stands transferred to Delhi and his premises were raided in Delhi. This would be irrelevant since the issue before this Court, however, centres around the validity of the sanction of the Central Government for the prosecution of the Petitioner under Section 19(l)(c) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Counsel for the Petitioner submits that since the impugned Order was passed in New Delhi this Court possessed territorial jurisdiction to entertain the writ petition.

(3.) It is too late in the day to contend that merely because the Union of India has its headquarters in Delhi, Courts located in the Capital can invariably properly exercise jurisdiction over every dispute where it has been impleaded as a party. Assuming for the sake of arguments that a part of the cause of action has arisen in New Delhi, I favour the opinion that this Court should abjure from exercising jurisdiction since there are other Courts which are better suited to entertain the disputes that have been raised in this Petition (see Gupta Sanitary Stores v. Union of India and Another, 27 (1985) DLT 2 (SN) (FB)=AIR 1985 Delhi 122). The decision in Patel Roadways Limited Bombay v. M/s. Prasad Trading Company, AIR 1992 SC 1514 is that if a Corporation has a subordinate office in the place where the cause of action arises, litigation must be commenced in that place alone, regardless of apparently wider enabling provision in Section 20. The Court adopted a realistic, businesslike and expedient approach in opining that, "It would be a great hardship if, in spite of the Corporation having a subordinate office at the place where the cause of action arises (with which in all probability the plaintiff has had dealings), such plaintiff is to be compelled to travel to the place where the Corporation has its principal place. That place should be convenient to the plaintiff; and since the Corporation has an office at such place, it will also be under no disadvantage". The significance of this Judgment is that it restricts jurisdiction, whether a contractual clause of this ' nature exists or not, to the particular place where the cause of action has substantially arisen, overruling other places which may have jurisdiction under Section 20 of the CPC. This rationale commends itself even in the context of Article 226 of the Constitution.