HANUMAN MAL Vs. BABULAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal is directed against the order dated 9th June, 1956, passed by Shri Chander Singh Mertia, Senior Civil Judge, Churu, decreeing the suit of the plaintiff in terms of an award.

(2.) THE appeal has been preferred by the plaintiff and one of the defendants in action, which was a suit for partition of ancestral property instituted by the appellant Hanuman against his father, the defendant No. 1, who is the other appellant, and his younger brother Babu Lal, who is the defendant No. 2 and respondent here.

(3.) IT is to be remembered that it was the learned Civil Judge of Ratangarh who made the reference to arbitration, as the suit had been filed before him. The award, therefore, could be presented only before that Court, which had made the reference. This obviously follows from the provisions of sec. 31 of the Arbitration Act, which provides that all questions regarding the validity, effect or existence of an award or an arbitration agreement between the parties to the agreement or persons claiming under them have to be decided by the Court in which the award under the agreement has been, or may be, filed and by no other Court. Sub-sec. (3) of sec. 31 also provides that all applications regarding the conduct of arbitration proceedings or otherwise arising our of such proceedings should be made to the Court where the award has been, or may be, filed, and to no other Court; and similarly sub-sec. (4) specifically says that - "notwithstanding anything contained elsewhere in this Act or in any other law for the time being in force, where in any reference any application under this Act has been made in a Court competent to entertain it, that Court alone shall have jurisdiction over the arbitration proceedings and all subsequent applications arising out of that reference and the arbitration proceedings shall be made in that Court and in no other Court. " Having regard to these specific provisions, it was mainly and solely for the Court of the Civil Judge, Ratangarh, to decide about the validity or otherwise of the award and the arbitration proceedings, including the validity of the reference. No other Court had jurisdiction in the matter. Therefore, the steps taken by the learned Civil Judge in asking the District Judge to transfer the proceedings to the Civil Judge of Churu and the subsequent order made by the learned District Judge in compliance with the requisition were entirely without jurisdiction. Since the matter has come before us, we, in the exercise of our revisional jurisdiction also, think it right even at this stage that those orders should be set aside. In the result we hold that the learned Civil Judge of Churu had no jurisdiction to deal with the matter at all, and the order under appeal passed by him is, therefore, ultra vires, the officer being functus officio under the terms of sec. 31 of the Act to deal with any such matter. The order, therefore, has to be set aside, and the case must go back to the Civil Judge of Ratangarh to dispose of the objections according to law. IT would be open to the learned counsel for the appellants, subject to any valid objection that the respondent may raise before the learned Civil Judge, to consider whether the reference itself was invalid because the Court entertaining the application for reference to arbitration had no jurisdiction to entertain the same on the ground that it was beyond its pecuniary jurisdiction.