FAQIR CHAND Vs. FINANCIAL COMMISSIONER PUNJAB CHANDIGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WHETHER the order of a learned Single Judge merely vacating an ex parte stay of dispossession from agricultural land in a pending writ petition is a judgment within the meaning of Clause 10 of the Letters Patent is the significant question which has arisen at the very threshold in this appeal.

(2.) THE issue stems from a civil writ petition preferred by the petitioners against the orders of the Financial Commissioner, Punjab and the revenue authorities below. The Motion Bench issued notice of motion therein but as no appearance was put in on behalf of the respondents on the date of hearing the writ petition was admitted and ad interim stay of dispossession was granted with notice to the opposite party with regard to the stay for the 23rd of September, 1977. On the 30th of September, 1977 after hearing the learned counsel for the parties the learned Single Judge for detailed reasons recorded, held that no case for stay had been made out and accordingly the ex parte stay granted by the Motion Bench was vacated. Aggrieved by this order the appellants have preferred this letters patent appeal. A notice of motion having been issued to the respondents, a preliminary objection at once was raised on their behalf challenging the very competency of the appeal primarily on the ground that the mere vacation of a stay order was not a 'judgment' and consequently no appeal lay against the same under clause 10 of the letters patent. As the question is of obvious significance we have heard fulldress arguments on the point by either side.

(3.) THE relevant part of the statutory provision around which the controversy inevitably revolves is in the following terms:-" 10. And we do further ordain that an appeal shall lie to the said High Court of Judicature at Lahore from the judgment (not being a judgment passed in the exercise of appellate jurisdiction in respect of a decree or order made in the exercise of appellate jurisdiction by a Court subject to the superintendence of the said High Court and not being an order made in the exercise of revisional jurisdiction, and not being a sentence or order passed or made in the exercise of the power of superintendence under the provisions of Section 107 of the Government of India Act, or in the exercise of criminal jurisdiction) of one Judge of the said High Court. "