DEORAO JADHAV Vs. BOARD OF REVENUE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE problems posed in both the Petitioners under Article 227 of the Constitution from the orders of the Board of Revenue are so similar that they can be examined in a single judgment. In petition No. 4 the Commissioner for Land Reforms and Jagirs, reviewed an earlier order of his, and made a fresh order in favour of the present Petitioner. In appeal before the Board of Revenue the opposite party contended that the Jagir Commissioner had no powers of reviewing his own orders and as such the order in review should he set aside and the original order of the Jagir Commissioner restored. The Board accepted the contention and allowed the appeal:

(2.) IT has been urged by the Petitioners in both the cases that for one thing, competency to review is inherent in every tribunal and even if statute is silent, it can review its judgments and orders in appropriate circumstances Secondly, in the instant case statute itself has given express powers of review by a cross reference to another enactment. Section 30 of the Abolition of Jagirs Act which begins with the word "Procedure" actually goes in its wording, well beyond mere procedure, -

(3.) IN fact, we have got three kinds of competency in our statute law of a tribunal modifying its own orders. One is a correction of clerical errors. It can be done by any tribunal whether or not statute empowers it. But the typical statutory provision is in Section 152 Code of Civil Procedure providing for the removal of clerical or arithmetical mistakes, incidental slips or omissions and the like. This of course presents no difficulty. Then we have what is called inherent powers typified by those in Section 151 Code of Civil Procedure and 561 -A Code of Criminal Procedure (with reference to the High Court). These powers again, though apparently wide, are of a nature substantially different from powers of review. Then come the powers of review typified by Section 114 and Order 47 of the Code of Civil Procedure Code. If the legislatures in our country had been in theory assuming the inherence of a power of review in a tribunal, this will not be the pattern of legislation here. The Civil and Criminal Procedure Codes have only been referred to as the best known of such statutes; but the pattern is more or less the same in every statute. In addition, there has been a body of caselaw, a good deal of which is summarised in standard annotations under Order 47 Rule 1 Code of Civil Procedure laying down that review is a creation of statute. One of them is the comparatively recent pronouncement of this High Court in Rajaram v. Rani Jamit Kunwar, : 1961 JLJ 1113. That ruling sets out earlier citations and concludes -