SANT PRASAD RAI @ SANT PRASAD Vs. RAMAWATI DEVI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Stamp Report is that the instant Letters Patent Appeal, purportedly filed under Clause 10 of the Patna High Court Rules Letters Patent, is not maintainable. On this question of maintainability, we have heard the learned counsel for the appellant at length.

(2.) The facts relevant for deciding the question are that in a pending Second Appeal, an interlocutory application was filed by purchasers of certain property during pendency of suit. They wanted to be impleaded as the interest in the suit property had been purchased by them. That intervention application was allowed and the interveners were directed to be added as intervener-respondents. The appellant, in the intra-Court appeal, was the defendant in the Title Suit who had preferred appeal against the original decree and succeeded. He was also one of the respondents in the Second Appeal. His plea, in this intra-Court appeal, is that the second appellate Court, that is this Court dealing with the Second Appeal, had no jurisdiction to add parties. Therefore, this Court exceeded the jurisdiction of a second appellate Court. The jurisdiction could only be found in Article 226 of the Constitution and by this reasoning, the Letters Patent Appeal would lie. According to the learned counsel, whether the second appellate Court decided the matter within its jurisdiction or beyond its jurisdiction, does not matter. According to him, we have to assume that it exercised jurisdiction beyond the Code of Civil Procedure (for brevity, CPC) and, as such, it could only be Article 226 of the Constitution. For the aforesaid, he relies on the recent judgment of the Apex Court in the case of Sh Jogendrasinhji Vijaysinghji -VersusState of Gujarat & Others, 2015 9 SCC 1. He has first referred to paragraph 30 which is quoted hereunder:

(3.) We have considered the matter and we are not impressed for we maintain that from second appellate proceedings arising from a Civil Court, no Letters Patent Appeal lies.