HAMEED PANICKER Vs. KADIRKUTTY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner was a joint applicant with his father for a licence to run a private market under Travancore Act, VII of 1092 for the year ending the lastday of December 1952. THE authority to grant the licence was at the time the application was presented, the District Collector, who passed an order dated 1. 4. 1952 in favour of the applicants sanctioning the opening of a market. That order was liable to be challenged by an appeal presented to the Board of Revenue within 30 days of its date excluding the time taken for obtaining a copy thereof or within such further time as the Board may see fit to allow, condoning delay. Act IX of 1950 enacted by S. 9 that: "government may at any time call for and examine the record of any case pending before, or disposed of by the Board and may pass such order in reference thereto as Government think fit. " Neither within the time allowed not at any time was there an appeal preferred to the Board against the order of the District Collector. On 14. 5. 1952 respondents 2 and 3 herein who felt aggrieved by the order, presented a petition before the Government for setting aside the order of the district Collector and for granting a license to them. On 14. 10. 1952 the government allowed their application and set aside the order of the Collector, after notice to and hearing the petitioner. It is this order of Government that is challenged in this Original Petition and it is sought to be set aside on the ground that the Government acted without jurisdiction in passing it.

(2.) THE only question for consideration is whether the complaint of the petitioner as regards the impugned order is well-founded. Learned counsel for the petitioner argues that the revisional jurisdiction of the Government under S. 9 can be invoked and exercised only after presentation of a proper appeal before the Board of Revenue and in this case there having been admittedly no appeal presented before the Board, the revisional jurisdiction of the Government to interfere was non-existent.

(3.) AN authority whose jurisdiction is questioned has jurisdiction to determine its own jurisdiction as well as to exercise jurisdiction conferred by consent, except in a case where there is absence of inherent jurisdiction. The observation of the Privy Council in Meenaksh y v. Subramonia (I. L. R. XI Mad. 26) that "the parties cannot by their mutual consent convert it (a suit) into a proper juridical process" applies "when the judge has no inherent jurisdiction over the subject-matter of a suit".