MULA NARAMMA Vs. MULA RENGAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) After taking time to consider my order, and giving the matter my very careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that this petition for transfer should be dismissed.

(2.) The transfer that has been applied for is of Original Petition No. 30 of 1922 on the file of the District Court of Anantapur to another District Court. That original petition was filed under the Guardians and Wards Act more than two years ago and has been pending all this time and is now part-heard. The most curious feature about the application for transfer is that the affidavit in support, thereof has been filed not by the petitioner, who is also the petitioner in the lower Court, or any agent or relation of hers, but by her vakil who has been appearing for her in that original petition. In the view that I have taken of this case it is unnecessary for me to deal in detail with the various allegations made and denied on one side or the other. It is sufficient to state that the application for transfer and the grounds alleged therefor, are due entirely to several regrettable passages and incidents in the course of the hearing of the petition between the learned vakil for the petitioner and the present learned District Judge of Anantapur.

(3.) Having regard to all the circumstances, there is reason to believe that the present petition for transfer was itself not the act and motion of the party, but was largely prompted by that very vakil. In spite of it, I should have been disposed to order a transfer if I were satisfied that on the merits and in the interests of justice it was a proper case for transfer. But I am not so satisfied. When a transfer is applied for on the ground that an impartial hearing of the case and proper adjudication could not be obtained because the Judge hearing the case has shown himself as prejudiced against or in favour of one side or the other, all that has to be ascertained is whether the allegation of the absence of an unprejudiced judicial mind is true in fact there and then and any enquiry into the causes that brought about such a state of things would, in my view, be not only irrelevant but be calculated to misdirect. The hearing of the application is not an occasion for the apportionment of an blame or any enquiry about the origin and causes, and it may possibly be that it would be incumbent on a higher Court to transfer a case from the file of a particular tribunal to another tribunal the moment it is clear that some prejudice has been created and that a fair hearing and an impartial adjudication could not reasonably be expected even though such a state of things has been brought about by the conduct of the very party applying for the transfer. In the present case there is, no doubt abundant evidence of a great deal of prejudice in the mind of the District Judge not against the petitioner or her case, but against her pleader, due altogether, as I cannot help thinking, to proceedings and incidents in this very case. I cannot, however, assume that prejudice against a particular pleader is or will operate as prejudice against the party or her case. It may no doubt, and perhaps often does, and one can only do his best to form his own judgment baking that and all other circumstances into consideration. It would be a dangerous principle to establish that the moment a Judge falls out with a pleader or vice versa the case should be transferred from that Judge to some other. If, on the other hand, in this case there was any reasonable ground for my supposing that the prejudice against the pleader has in any manner or measure affected the judicial attitude towards the petitioner or her case, I should certainly have given effect to it by ordering a transfer even at the risk of such an order being supposed to establish a wrong precedent. But no such reasonable ground or apprehension has been made out to my satisfaction, and, what is more, I should not let myself under the guise of doing justice to the petitioner perpetrate an injustice against the respondent. Further, the petitioner would appear to have on the record another pleader also appearing for her. If, therefore, even after the lapse of all this time the temporary heat and irritation of the moment should not have sub-sided so as to allow of the learned Judge and the learned pleader resuming their normal functions and proceed with the hearing of the case even then any difficulties that the petitioner may in consequence be put to would not be of such a nature as to warrant my ordering a transfer of the case on that ground.