SANTOKH SINGH Vs. SAT PAL JAYANTI PARSHAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The parties having acquiesced in an order of remand by the Appellate Authority to the Rent Controller and having further taken their chance of succeeding before the latter, whether any of them, either before the Appellate Authority or before this Court for the first time can be permitted to pose a challenge to the validity of the proceedings before the Rent Controller, taken in the wake of the order of remand of the Appellate Authority on the ground of lack of jurisdiction on the part of the Appellate Authority to remand the case to the Rent Controller, is the significant question that requires resolving in this case.

(2.) When the revision petition came up for hearing before me in the first instance, the counsel for the respondents raised the preliminary objection to the effect that the order of remand dated 23rd February, 1975 being without jurisdiction, all proceedings in the wake of that order, were illegal. The counsel for the petitioners sought to meet that objection by urging that the order of remand be treated as an order inviting report of the Rent Controller in terms of sub-section (4) of Section 15 of the East Punjab Urban Rent Restriction Act, 1949 (hereinafter referred to as the 'Act') and the order of the Rent Controller be treated as a report of the kind. The plea advanced on behalf of the petitioners appeared to be reasonable, first for the reason that hyper technical plea posed on the basis of procedural law, should not be allowed to thwart the justice and secondly for the reason that if without doing evidence to the provisions of the statute and remaining well within the confines of reasonable interpretation thereof, an order of an authority or a Court can be sustained on the ground that it could have been passed though in different from in exercise of some statutory power, then such an order should be sustained.

(3.) This Court has no doubt consistently held the latest decision being of a Division Bench of this Court is Raghu Nath Jalota v. Ramesh Duggal and another, 1980 1 RCJ 404, that the Appellate Authority under the Act lacks jurisdiction to remand the whole matter for the re-decision of the Rent Controller. But, sub-section (4) of Section 15 of the Act, does invest, the Appellate Authority with the power of seeking a report from the Rent Controller and, therefore, judging in the context of this provision, the plea advanced before me on behalf of the petitioners could not be considered to be so preposterous as not to deserve a sympathetic look. However, the learned counsel for the respondents confronted me with a Single Bench decision of this Court in Som Nath Kapur v. Tilak Raj and another,1980 1 RCR 684, wherein a plea of the kind as had been advanced on behalf of the petitioners before me, did not find favour with the learned Judge and the repelled the same by observing "that the Appellate Authority had no power to remand the case to the Rent Controller for deciding it afresh. The order of the Appellate Authority dated august 30, 1975 remanding the case to the Rent Controller for a fresh decision, is therefore, nonest. The Appellate Authority did not ask for the report of the Rent Controller, it would, therefore, be not appropriate to treat the order of remand of the Appellate Authority dated August 30, 1975 as one asking for the report of the Rent Controller dated November 23, 1976 in pursuance of the remand order as his report to the Appellate Authority". Despite the aforesaid Single Bench decision of this Court my sympathies remained for the plea advanced by the petitioners, but instead of recording a dissent, I referred the matter to the larger Bench and that is how the case is before us.