AYILADA APPALANAIDU Vs. RANUTHU CHINNAM NAIDU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This batch Revision Petitions have been filed by the tenants who succeeded in getting the suits filed for recovery of rents stayed by application of Section 10 of the Code of Civil Procedure. These tenants have succeeded in making out that O. S. NOB., 82, 87, 88, 89, 219 of 59 and Small Cause Suit No. 213 of 1959 on the file of the District Munsiffs Court, Eajam, pending against them cannot be tried pending the disposal of Second Appeal No. 448 of 59 which culminated out of O. S. No. 589 of 1953 on the file of the same Court as in both sets of causes, the matter in issue is also directly and substantially the same. All these suits, it may be pointed out, are filed by the landlord for recovery of rents in respect of the same properties but for successive years. Though the petitioners thus obtained orders staying the trial of these suits, they complain by filing the present Revision_ Petitions that the Lower Court imposed certain "terms which are illegal and should be considered as alien to the powers conferred upon a Court under Section 10 Civil Procedure Code. The material portion of the order complained of is in para 7 in the following terms: -

(2.) Further, what is enjoined upon a Court when these conditions are satisfied is that the Court which has to deal with the later suit shall not proceed with the trial of that suit. The language of this section is clearly mandatory in the sense that once these conditions are fulfilled, the operative part of the Section comes into plays as to stay the trial of the suit. Therefore, it is not possible for any Court thereafter to also insist upon other conditions being fulfilled as if any discretion is left in the Court in the matter of ordering stay of the trial. To make the meaning more plain, it is impossible for am Court to stay the trial by seeking also to impose any other condition; and secondly make an operation of the stay contingent upon the fulfilment or the performance of any other obligation; and much less, to make it possible for trial of the Euit to be taken up in default of the performance of a superimposed condition as is contemplated by the order under revision. For these reasons. I am perfectly convinced that the order of the lower Court is wrong in so far as it has imposed the terms as the payment of half the rent for the suit year or for the future years.

(3.) Mr. Mangachari, in attacking the order of the lower Court, placed before this Court the decision in Senaji Kapurchand v. Pannaji Devi-chand, ILR 46 Bom 431 : (AIR 1922 Bom 276) to make out that what is stayed by a Court by virtue of the powers conferred under section in Civil Procedure Code is only the trial of a suit and that a Court is not precluded from granting interim reliefs by way of appointment of a receiver or other reliefs and therefore adding terms at the time of staying the trial is illegal. On the analogy of it, I consider that it would certainly be competent to make just or proper orders keeping the parties in possession, but the same powers cannot be made use of nor even the inherent powers under Section 151 Civil Procedure Code to impose terms while staying the trial of a suit under Section 10 Civil Procedure Code.