AMAR KAUR Vs. KULBIR SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Through the medium of these two petitions the petitioners seek transfer of their claim petitions pending with the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal, Srinagar to its counterpart at Jammu, principally on the ground of the convenience of the parties, though the accident out of which the claim petitions arose allegedly occurred near Qazigund in Kashmir province. The respondents have submitted in writing that they have no objection to the transfer of the petitions from the tribunal at Srinagar to the tribunal at Jammu. Ordinarily, the agreement of the parties should have sufficed to transfer the claim petitions from Srinagar to Jammu but the question is not whether there are grounds to grant the petitioners prayer but one of its permissibility in law and that controversy in turn would require determination of whether the High Court has the power to transfer a claim petition, from one claims tribunal to another in the State.

(2.) The power to transfer civil cases is provided in S.24 of the Civil P.C. It provides :

(3.) There is divergence of opinion amongst the courts in the country as to whether a claims tribunal can be considered to be a court subordinate to the High Court. Whereas some of the courts have held in the affirmative, the others have decided in the negative. But to apply S.24 C.P.C. to the claims tribunal, it is not necessary to refer to the differing views of the High Courts on the point in view of the pronouncement of the Supreme Court in Bhagwati Devi v. I.S. Goel 1983 0 ACJ 123 where the Supreme Court referred to its earlier pronouncement in State of Haryana v. Smt. Darshana Devi, AIR 1979 SC 855, which arose out of a decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The question before the Punjab and Haryana High Court was whether a claimant before the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal could claim the benefit of Order XXXIII C.P.C. to the proceedings before the claims tribunal. The tribunal had negatived the claim holding that O.XXXIII C.P.C. was not applicable to the proceedings before the tribunal. The High Court, however, overruled the tribunal against which the State of Haryana filed an appeal to the Supreme Court which approved the reasoning of the High Court holding that O.XXXIII C.P.C. also applied to the tribunals which have all the trappings "of a Civil Court" and equated the 'Tribunal' with a 'Civil Court'. In Bhagwati Devi's case (supra) the matter arose in the context of the power of the Supreme Court under S.25 C.P.C. to transfer suits and other proceedings, inter alia, from one 'Civil Court' in one State to another 'Civil Court' in any other State. Their Lordships were considering the applicability of S.25 C.P.C. to the transfer of the proceedings from one tribunal to another tribunal. They opined: