VITHALBHAI MOTIBHAI Vs. NADIAD ELECTRIC SUPPLY CO LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE are two revision applications in Small Cause Court, suits.The parties are on the one hand certain inhabitants of Nadiad who have an electric motor for the purpose of irrigating their lands and therefore require electrical energy; the other party is a Nadiad company which supplies electrical energy.

(2.) IN one of the cases there is a question as to the construction of an agreement between the parties. IN the other case another agreement between them had to be construed. There was a question whether it was consistent with certain Section s of the INdian Electricity Act and there was also a question whether the agreement had been obtained by undue influence, which of course was a pure question of fact. They are therefore quite ordinary Small Cause Court suits. The amount of money involved is very trivial, Rs. 45 in one case and Rs. 38 in the other. Prima facie it appears therefore that these are disputes which the Legislature intended to be settled by the Small Cause Court and not by a bench of two Judges of the High Court or by the High Court at all.

(3.) WE are informed that these cases were referred to a bench instead of being disposed of by a single Judge of this Court because a doubt was felt as to whether certain observations of the learned Chief Justice in Bell & Co. v. Waman Hentrap 1 were consistent with the decision of this Court in Poona City Municipality v. Ramji2. Mr. Shah who appears for thei applicants here says that the learned Chief Justice laid it down that the High Court should only interfere in revision in cases where it appears that there has been no fair trial by the inferior Court. WE do not agree, however, that the learned Chief Justice said anything of the kind. He did not attempt to give any exhaustive list of cases in which interference would be justified, and the case where there has been no fair trial was only mentioned as one of the cases in which interference would be proper. With all respect we see nothing to criticise in the observations in this case, and we see no inconsistency between them and what was held in Poona City Municipality v. Ramji. In the present cases we see nothing whatever which invokes the exercise of our extraordinary jurisdiction. WE do not propose therefore to go into the merits and we discharge the rule with costs in both cases.