PRAN NATH PANJAN Vs. STATE OF J&K

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE learned District Judge, Srinagar, has dismissed an application under section 20 of the Jammu and Kashmir Arbitration Act filed by the appellant against the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The appellant alleged that he in the year 1960 obtained a contract from the Irrigation Department for excavation of earth and also for the construction of a drainage in New Partap Canal, Akhnoor. Eventually the Chief Engineer of the Department issued a demand notice calling upon the appellant to pay a sum of Rs. 5913.00 which was alleged to be due from him. Steps were taken to enforce the claim by recovering it as arrears of land revenue. The petitioner appellant denied his liability to pay the amount, and he by means of the application sought the arbitration of the Chief Engineer on the matter. He called in question the power of the Chief Engineer to have arbitrarily modified the rates to his disadvantage - The petition was resisted by the respondent on various grounds. The maintainability of the petition was inter alia objected to on the ground that the petitioner -appellant had brought a suit in the court of the Sub -Registrar, Srinagar, in which he had made the same averments as in the present petition and had claimed relief from the court by way of issuing an injunction against the Chief Engineer. That suit was, however, dismissed on 16 -3 -1970. Meanwhile the petitioner filed an application on 18 -8 -1969 under section 20 of the Arbitration Act. The learned Judge was of the opinion that the petition was not maintainable as in his view, section 34 of the Arbitration Act delimits the stage upto which reference to arbitration might be sought in a matter touching an arbitration agreement about which legal proceedings have already been taken. The stage lasts upto the filing of the written statement or taking of any other steps in the proceedings. According to the learned Judge that stage was over and therefore the right of the petitioner to invoke the arbitration clause had become extinct and it could not be held to survive for purposes of Section 20 of the Act. He, therefore, dismissed the petition. Aggrieved by this order the petitioner -appellant has come up in appeal before this court.

(2.) WE have heard the arguments in the case.

(3.) ON a perusal of the civil file No. 57 entitled Pran Nath Vs. Chief Engineer -Irrigation decided by the Sub Registrar, Srinagar, on 16 -3 -1970 it would appear that the appellant had brought a civil suit with the same allegations. He made similar averments in the plaint as in the petition. In the suit he disputed the power of the Chief Engineer to have modified the rates. He, therefore, asked the civil court to consider this matter, quash the notice of demand, and grant a decree for perpetual injunction against the Chief Engineer. Now the matter upon which the petitioner appellant sought arbitration by means of an application under section 20 of the Arbitration Act was precisely the same as in the civil suit which was pending before the civil court. That suit was, however, dismissed by the civil court. In fact it was during the continuance of the proceedings of the civil suit that the appellant filed an application under section 20 of the Arbitration Act. In the said application he did not make any mention of the pendency of the civil suit in the civil court. This fact he suppressed in the petition before the District Judge.