RYOTS OF GARABANDHO Vs. ZEMINDAR OF PARLAKIMEDI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal is brought, by leave of the Madras High Court, from an order of that Court dated November 5, 1937, dismissing the appellants' application that a writ of certiorari should issue to the Board of Revenue at Madras to bring up, in order to be quashed, an order made by the Collective Board, on October 9, 1936, under Section 172 of the Madras Estates Land Act, 1908.

(2.) THE ancient writ of certiorari in England is an original writ which may issue out of a superior Court requiring that the record of the proceedings in some cause or matter pending before an inferior Court should be transmitted into the superior Court to be there dealt with. THE writ is so named because, in its original Latin form, it required that the King should "be certified" of the proceedings to be investigated and the object is to secure, by the exercise of the authority of a superior Court, that the jurisdiction of the inferior tribunal should be properly exercised. This writ does not issue to correct purely executive acts, but, on the other hand, its application is not narrowly limited to inferior "Courts" in the strictest sense. Broadly speaking, it may be said that if the act done by the inferior body is a judicial act, as distinguished from being a ministerial act, certiorari will lie. THE remedy, in point of principle, is derived from the superintending authority which the Sovereign's superior Courts, and in particular the Court of King's Bench, possess and exercise over inferior jurisdictions. This principle has been transplanted to other parts of the King's dominions, and operates, within certain limits, in British India.

(3.) ON February 9, 1937, the present appellants petitioned the Madras High Court for a writ of certiorari to quash the order of the Collective Board of Revenue, complaining that the rents had been raised above the limit of two annas in the rupee or twelve and a half per cent., which is the maximum increase permitted under Section 30(2)(b) of the Act.