PERIA KOIL KELVI APPAN GOVINDA RAMANUJA PEDDA JEEYANGARLAVARU Vs. KADAMBI DHARMAPURI TIRUVENGADA KRISHNAMACHARLU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is against an order of Curgenven, J., in C.M.P. No. 3375 of 1926 in which the learned Judge directed stay of execution of a decree by suspending the injunction which had been decreed by the Subordinate Judge of Chittoor in O.S. No. 23 of 1919.

(2.) The respondent took a preliminary objection that no appeal lies, and we heard a good deal of argument on the matter into which I do not propose to go at length. It cannot be denied that the practice of this Court has been to allow a Letters Patent Appeal from an order of a single Judge of this Court in matters of stay of execution pending the disposal of an appeal in the Court. Mr. Venkatachariar, however, for the respondent contended that the pronouncement of the Privy, Council in a case reported in Sevak Jeranchod Bhogilal V/s. The Dakore Temple Committee (1925) 49 MLJ 25 (PC). implies that the practice of this Court is not justified in law. In that case the Judicial Committee remarked at the end of their judgment, referring to the Letters Patent of the High Court of Bombay, that the term judgment in the Letters Patent of the High Court means in civil cases a decree and not a judgment in the ordinary sense. The point actually before them was the meaning of the word judgment in Clause 39 of the Letters Patent of Bombay. But the remark is general and is not confined to Section 39. As the language of the Letters Patent of Bombay is the same as that in Madras, the remark would equally apply to this Court.

(3.) It is essential in order to understand the application and the necessity for the remark quoted above, to state the point at issue in that case. Under a temple scheme prescribed by the Privy Council decree the temple committee was given power to frame rules subject to the sanction of the local District judge and subject to alterations and additions by the High Court. The District Judge sanctioned certain rules so drawn up and so-called appeals were taken in the High Court, the appellants also applying under the rules of the scheme for modifications by the High Court. The High Court did not entertain the latter but heard the so-called appeals and after the decision granted the appellants leave to appeal to the Privy Council. The Privy Council held that the orders of the High Court on the appeals were not judgments within the meaning of Section 39 of the Letters Patent and that the High Court had no legal authority to deal with the matter at all except in so far as it was exercising the power conferred on it by the Privy Council decree scheme, a matter more in the nature of executive or administrative than of judicial activity. Hence, as the Privy Council held, no appeal lay from the District Judge to the High Court and therefore no appeal lay from the High Court to the Privy Council except on the sole ground that the judgment or decree was incompetent. Then the remark here relied upon follows.