HANS RAJ VERMA Vs. KASHMIR ELECTRIC COMPANY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition for revision of the order of the Court of Shri Harchand Singh Maunder, Subordinate Judge First Class, Phagwara, dated October 21, 1975, allowing the plaintiff-respondent leave to amend his plaint conditional on payment of Rs. 25/- as costs.

(2.) Mr. S.K. Jain who appears for the plaintiff respondent, raises a preliminary objection. He says that in pursuance of the order under revision counsel for the parties appeared before the trial Court on November 5, 1975, when the amended plaint was filed and costs were paid to and accepted by the counsel for the defendant-petitioner. The matters did not stop there, the counsel for the defendant-petitioner in the trial Court obtained an adjournment for filing a fresh written statement in reply to the amended plaint for which purpose the case was adjourned to November 12, 1975. The lower Court record which is before me shows that on November 12, 1975, counsel for the defendant-petitioner made a statement before the trial Court to the effect that he affirmed his previous written statement and did not want to file any fresh one, whereupon the case was adjourned to November 21, 1975, for issues. The objection is that the defendant-petitioner having accepted the costs awarded as compensation for allowing the amendment, he has accepted the order, and no revision petition lies against the same. This matter is concluded by the judgment of P.C. Pandit, J. (as he then was) in Dr. Sewak Parshad v. Gram Panchayat Raipur Rani, 1972 RCR(Rent) 211and by the Division Bench judgment of this Court in Prithvi Singh Azad v. Ajaib Singh Sindhu and others, 1965 AIR(P&H) 463In Dr. Sewak Parshad's case it was clearly held that if the plaintiff accepts the costs awarded for allowing leave to amend the written statement, the plaintiff is precluded from challenging the order of amendment after acceptance of the costs. Similarly in Prithvi Singh Azad's case , Dua and Mahajan, JJ. held that where the amendment of the petition was allowed by the Tribunal on payment of costs, which were duly received by the other side, the costs having been accepted amendment of the petition is no longer open to challenge even in appeal against the dismissal of the main petition. Mr. S.P. Jain has not been able to cite any authority to the contrary. Even otherwise the proposition of law laid down in the above judgments does not appear to me to admit of any exception.

(3.) In these circumstances, I allow the preliminary objection and dismiss the revision petition though without any order as to costs. Petition dismissed.