BUDHULAL JAGANNATH Vs. HIRDAGRAH COLLIERIES LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS application for revision is directed against the order fixing the remuneration of the receiver. It has been fixed at 2 1/2 per cent, of the gross receipts plus 4 annas per ton as sales commission. The judgment-debtors apply in revision. The receiver was appointed in the following circumstances. The non-applicant, which is a limited joint stock company, obtained a decree against the applicants and after decree put in an application stating that execution was likely to be delayed and that therefore it was just and convenient that a receiver whom they termed as interim receiver, should be appointed, and they suggested that they themselves should be the receivers. On that application the non-applicant was appointed ex parte and notice was issued to the other side. The other side (judgment-debtors) put in an objection objecting to the appointment of the non-applicant as receiver but stated that they did not object to any other person being appointed. They also asked that the decree be made payable by instalments. Their application was rejected and apparently the non-applicant was continued in possession as receiver; in any case it has continued so to act.

(2.) IT is a matter for comment that a limited liability company should have been appointed as receiver because a receiver is an officer of the Court and there are inconveniences in having a limited liability company as an officer of the Court. It is also a matter for comment that a business rival of the judgment-debtors should have been appointed. However, we are not concerned with those matters here except indirectly. The main objection raised to the revision is that the matter is not revisable because it does not fall under Section 115, Civil P.C., and that the order fixing a remuneration being one made under Order 40, Rule 2, is not appealable. The only appealable orders in respect of receivers are those made under Order 40, Rule 1 or Rule 4.

(3.) COMING now to the merits, the English rule given in Seton's Judgments and Orders, Vol. I, p. 746, is that when a party interested proposes himself as receiver he is usually required to act without salary unless by consent. There is nothing to show that the rule is different in India. Here the non-applicant proposed itself as the receiver. It is clear that it was acting to a large extent in its own interests. It did not ask that it should be paid any remuneration and consequently the usual rule ought to apply and it ought to be taken that the offer was to act without remuneration and that the appointment was so made the order being silent on the point. But however that may be, as we have said, circumstances may alter and it may be proper for a Court at a later stage to make an order allowing remuneration. Whether it was so proper in this case is a matter into which we need not enter because it has not been raised in that shape in the grounds of appeal. We are informed that the non-applicant has been obliged to sink some of its own money in working this colliery and that that may have been a proper basis for allowing remuneration at the stage when the application was made. But as we have said this particular matter is not challenged in the application for revision and consequently we can take it that there were sufficient grounds, which are not disclosed in the order, justifying the subsequent order.