CHEDDU Vs. ABUL HASAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The important point of law involved in this revision is whether this Court has jurisdiction to interfere with the appellate order of a District Registrar, purporting to he made under Sec. 73, Registration Act ordering a document to be registered, after refusal by the Sub-Registrar to register it on the ground of dental of execution.

(2.) The only power of revision this Court has got is under Sec. 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Under that section, his Court can revise any decision made in any case by any Court subordinate to this Court, and in which no appeal lies thereto. The subsidiary questions involved are firstly, whether the District Registrar acts judicially; secondly, whether he acts as a Court; and thirdly, whether if he is acting as a Court, he is subordinate to this Court.

(3.) The term 'Court' has not been defined in the Code of Civil Procedure. There is, however, a real distinction, though it may often be fine and difficult to define, between a tribunal or authority and a Court. According to Halsbury's Laws of England, the word Court originally meant among other meanings, the sovereign's palace but subsequently came to acquire the meaning of the place where justice is administered and persons who exercise judicial functions under authority derived either immediately or mediately from the sovereign. While judicial functions are essential for a Court, the mere fact that a person exercises judicial functions is not sufficient to constitute him a Court. This proposition was propounded by Lord Sankey, L.C. In Shell Co. of Australia Vs. Federal Commissioner of Taxation, (1931) A.C. 275 , where he observed that there a may be tribunals with many of the trapping of a Court which, nevertheless, would not be Courts in the strict sense of exercising judicial power. He elaborated this proposition in a negative form and said that a tribunal is not necessarily a Court because it gives a final decision, nor be cause it hears witnesses on oath, nor because two or more contending parties appear before it between whom it has to decide, nor because it gives decisions which effect the rights of subjects, nor because there is an appeal to a Court, nor because it is a body to which a matter is referred by another body. A tribunal or authority may have many of the powers of a Court, but it will not be a Court unless it exercises judicial functions under a duty to exercise in a judicial manner. It was observed by their Lords of the Supreme Court in Brijnandan Sinha Vs. jyoti Narain, A.I.R. 1956 S.C. 66 , that in order to constitute a Court in the strict sense of the term, an essential condition is that the Court should have, apart from having some of the trappings of a judicial tribunal/power to give a decision or a decision or a definitive judgment which has finality and authoritativeness which are the essential tests of a judicial pronouncement. In Virendar Kumar Vs. State of Punjab, A.I.R. 1956 S.C. 153 , the Supreme Court observed that what distinguishes a Court from a quasi-judicial tribunal is that it is charged with duty to decide disputes in a judicial manner and declare the rights of parties in a definite judgment. The same ratio can be gathered from the decisions of the Supreme Court in Bharat Bank Ltd. Vs. Employees of Bharat Bank Ltd., A.I.R. 1950 S.C. 188 , Maqbool Hussain Vs. State of Bombay, A.I.R. 1953 Supreme Court 325 , Harinagar Sugar Mills Vs. Shyam Sunder Mills, A.I.R. 1961, Supreme Court, 1669 ; Jagannath Prasad Vs. State of Uttar Pradesh, A.I.R. 1963, Supreme Court, 416 ; Jaswant Sugar Mills Vs. Lakshmi Chand, A.I.R. 1963, Supreme Court, 677 ; Engineering Mazdoor Sabha Vs. Hind Cycles Ltd., A.I.R. 1963 Supreme Court 874 . and Jugal Kishore Vs. Sitamarhi Central Co-operative Bank, A.I.R. 1967 Supreme Court, 1494 .