Case: Rami Manprasad Gordhandas &amp; Others Vs. Gopichand Shersing Gupta &amp; Others

1. This is aappeal by special leave under Art. 136 of the Constitution. It is directed against the judgment of a learned Single Judge of the High Court of Gujarat at Ahmedabad dismissing revision application No. 393 of 1963 treated by the High Court to be under Section 29 (2) of the Bombay Rents, Hotel and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 57 of 1947 (hereinafter called the Act).2. The plaintiff a public trustinstituted a suit for possession of the premises in question against the tenants (who are respondents in this Court) on the ground inter alia of failure to pay rent. That suit was dismissed by the Additional Judge, Small Cause Court at Ahmedabad on the ground that the notice given by the landlord was defective. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to go into other details or the history of the suit proceedings in the trial Court.3. The City Civil Court, Ahmedabad (VII Court) dismissed the appeal on January 15, 1963. Thethereupon moved the Gujarat High Court by means of a civil revision application. No law was stated in the memorandum of revision under which the High Court was approached for revision of the appellate judgment. The High Court, as appears from the impugned judgment dated January 12, 1967, treated the revision application to be under Section 29 (2) of the Act and after discussing the points raised dismissed the same holding the notice given by the landlord to be invalid. It is this judgment which is challenged by the plaintiff in this Court.

Court's reasoning:
4. Shri S. T. Desai has raised a preliminary objections to the competence of the appeal. According to him, on the date of the appellate judgment of the City Civil Court, the said judgment was neither open to further appeal nor was there any provision in the Act under which the High Court could be approached for revising the said judgment, with the result that the revision preferred by thehad in any event to be dismissed as incompetent.The ground on which the High Court dismissed the revision is, therefore, immaterial because under the law it is not open to theto urge that the High Court could or should have granted any relief on an incompetent revision. In our view, this point is relevant more to the merits than to the competency of the appeal.n (2) of this section plainly does not provide for revision to the High Court. It merely prohibits further appeal from the decision given on appeal under(1) of Section 29.It is thus clear that the High Court was under some mistaken impression when it observed that the revision before it was under Section 29 (2) of the Act. Right of appeal and revision, it is nowas a creature of statute and there can be no inherent right either of appeal or of revision against a judgment or order of a Court.7.Shri Desai has referred us to Keshavalal Jethalal Shah v. Mohanlal Bhagwandas, (1968) 3 SCR 623   = (AIR 1968 SC 1336  ) for the view that Section 29 (2) in its unamended from did not confer on the High Court any power of revision. Shri shroff rightly conceding that he was bound by this decision relied on it for the submission that we should send the case back to the High Court for considering whether there were cogent grounds for interference under Section 115, Code of Civil Procedure.We are unable to accept this submission. In the reported case the revision expressly purported to have been filed under Section 115, C. P. C. Such is not the case before us. No request was made to the High Court to treat the revision under Section 115, C. P. C. and the only provision of law under which the revision was understood both by theand the High Court to have been filed was Section 29 (2). No doubt the lable under which a revision is filed, if erroneous, does not estop the party from paying that the revision may be dealt with under the proper law applicable to the case and such a prayer is open to consideration by the Court. But such a prayer has, as a rule, to be made in the Court which is requested to exercise its judicial discretion for that purpose. Section 115, C. P. C., it is plain, vests the High Court with a discretionary power to be exercised judicially to interfere only when the cause of justice demands it. The High Court is not bound to interfere merely because the conditions in clause (a), (b) or (c) of Section 115 are satisfied. The appellant never requested the High Court to exercise its power under Section 115 of the Code and the High Court also did not consider the question of exercising its discretionary power thereunder. In this Court also no ground seems to have been taken in the special leave application complaining that the High Court was in error in failing to exercise the power conferred on it under Section 115, C. P. C.We are, therefore, unable to find any cogent ground for permitting the appellant now to make out this new case in this Court with the result that the order of the High Court dismissing the appeal must be considered to be unexceptionable though we confine our decision only to the ground that no revision was competent in that Court under Section 29 (2) of the Act.10. On the view that we have taken it is unnecessary to refer to the decision of this Court in Mrs. Manorama S. Masurekar v. Mrs. Dhanlaxmi G. Shah, 7 Guj LR 1061 = (AIR 1967 SC 1078  ) dealing with the scope of the variousof Section 12 of the Act. It is equally unnecessary to refer to the unreported decision of this Court in Raghunath Ravji Dandekar v. Anant Narayan Apte, C. A. No. 387 of 1964, D/(SC) also dealing with the scope of Section 12 (2) of the Act, though it may be pointed out that this Court disallowed the respondent in the unreported case to raise for the first time in this Court the point that the High Court had no jurisdiction to interfere in revision under Section 115, C. P. C. there being no question of jurisdiction involved.