Report No. 14

12. Raising of appellate jurisdiction of district judges.-

In our opinion, much relief can be given to the High Courts by a resort to the simple expedient recommended by the High Court Arrears Committee, 1949, of raising the appellate jurisdiction of the District Courts. Its introduction, we think, will be of great advantage in all the High Courts. As the High Court Arrears Committee correctly pointed out in 1949, a great deal of the time of the High Court is taken up in disposing of first appeals. "Thirty to forty per cent. of these first appeals arise out of suits valued at Rs. 10,000 or less.

Considering the depreciation which has taken place in the value of money and consequent rise in the market value of property generally, there does not appear to be any cogent reason why the District Courts should not be vested with jurisdiction to dispose of first appeals upto Rs. 10,000." It may be pointed out that the present limit of Rs. 5,000 was fixed over a century ago. In Bombay, Madras and Madhya Pradesh, the District Judges hear all appeals upto Rs. 10,000 from the decrees of the Subordinate and Civil Judges. In Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal also, the appellate jurisdiction of the District Judges has been raised to Rs. 10,000.

13. Strengthening cadre of District Judges.-

We are confident that the acceptance of the recommendation will give considerable relief to the High Courts by reducing the number of annual institutions. It is true that it will result in an increase of work in the district appellate Courts and require more Judges in these Courts. But, it is easier and less expensive to appoint more District Judges than to 'raise the strength of the High Courts. The State Governments will, however, have to take prompt measures to appoint the additional District Judges needed; otherwise, the result will merely be the accumulation of heavy arrears in the district appellate Courts.

14. A possible objection.-

To the course, suggested above, an objection was taken on the ground that the judicial officer of the present day is not competent to handle appeals in cases of a higher valuation. This view has, in our opinion, no substance. It overlooks the important circumstances of the steep fall in the value of money so that claims of Rs. 10,000 in value today are but what would have been claims of the value of Rs. 3,000 some years ago.

We are convinced that the increase in the pecuniary jurisdiction of the district and subordinate Courts, both in original and appellate, is justified by the fall in the value of money. We, therefore, recommend that, following the examples of Bombay, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Madras and U.P., the Governments of the States where the appellate jurisdiction of the district Courts is below Rs. 10,000 should take immediate steps to raise it to Rs. 10,000.

15. Retrospective legislation (Transfer of pending appeals).-

As a corollary, we further recommend that retrospective legislation should be forthwith undertaken for the two-fold purpose of transferring all pending first appeals in the High Courts between Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 10,000 to district appellate Courts and for providing that appeals in all suits below Rs. 10,000 should lie to the district appellate Courts, whether the suits were instituted before or after the date of the legislation.

The West Bengal and the U.P. enactments are not retrospective in that they do not apply to, or affect appeals from, decrees or orders passed in suits instituted before the commencement of the relevant Acts. Where such appeals have become ready for hearing, for example, when the paper books are ready and the advocates have been briefed, additional costs and hardship to the parties and the advocates can be avoided by temporarily posting a sufficient number of District Judges at the head quarters of the High Court to dispose of such appeals within a year.

16. No scope for curtailment.-

The two rights of appeal viz., the right of first appeal to the High Court and a further right of appeal to the Supreme Court in certain cases are, to quote the Civil Justice Committee, "both proper and necessary *** and that guarded and conditioned as at present, they are justifiable in principle, in practice necessary as a control over the different (and differing) High Courts and a source of strength for our judicial system with the instructed and uninstructed public.1"

With the abolition of the jurisdiction of the Privy Council and the creation of a Supreme Court in India, the great hardship of heavy costs which had to be incurred in England in appeals of this type has disappeared. On the whole, therefore, we see no further scope for the curtailment of first appeals to the High Court or of appeals to the Supreme Court under Article 133.

1. Report, p. 313.

17. The leapfrog proposal.-

Our attention has, however, been drawn to a possible method of reducing costs and expediting the ultimate decision in cases of this class.

This is known as the "leap-frog" proposal and was considered in its application to appeals to the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords by the Evershed Committee. The principle of the "leap-frog" system which was sponsored by Lord Greene before the Evershed Committee was that in cases which were suitable for appeal to the House of Lords and which were of the type in which leave to appeal to the House of Lords was normally granted, the expense and delay involved in appealing to the Court of Appeal in the first instance could be avoided by allowing such appeals to go straight to the House of Lords.

"In the exceptional case, of the type considered suitable for consideration by the House of Lords, it would be competent, on the appellant's giving notice of appeal, for either party to petition the House of Lords for leave to appeal thereto direct, by-passing the Court of Appeal. If the application were granted, the appeal would go direct to the House of Lords; if it were refused, the appeal would stand remitted to the Court of Appeal whose decision would then be final."1

1. Final Report of the Committee on Supreme Court Procedure and Practice, p. 156, para., 488.

On this basis, the "leap-frog" system, in its application to India, would probably involve all cases within the purview of clauses (a), (b) and (c) of Article 133 of the Constitution so that with the leave of the Supreme Court, the parties would be allowed to "leap-frog" the first appeal to the High Court by taking the case straight to the Supreme Court.

18. Objections.-

The proposal of Lord Greene was based on the assumption that all cases of the type which ultimately go to the House of Lords with leave are easily recognizable from the start. This assumption was not acceptable to the Evershed Committee whose view was confirmed by the evidence placed before it that such ready identification was not possible. The Committee's view was also confirmed by a sub-committee of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary who pointed out that "the House of Lords case", far from being readily identifiable at first instance, not infrequently, acquired its qualification for the first time in the Court of Appeal.

It is easy to anticipate similar difficulties in India, especially in regard to cases coming under clauses (b) and (c) of Article 133 of the Constitution. To meet this objection, it might be argued that in India the "leap-frog" system could at .any rate be introduced in cases covered by clause (a) of Article 133 in which the value of the subject-matter of the dispute would clearly be above Rupees 20,000, provided both the appellant and the respondent before the High Court declared, in the first instance, that in the event of the decision of the High Court against them, they would take the matter to the Supreme Court in further appeal.

The answer to this is to be found in the second ground of opposition of the Law Lords to the "leap-frog" system. It was pointed out that although the parties might assent that the case would undoubtedly have to go to the Supreme Court, it might frequently happen that after the hearing in the Court of the First Appeal there may, in fact, be no desire to litigate further, not so much on the ground of costs, but because the losing party might be advised that it would not be worth­while to take the matter in a further appeal.

There are two further objections to the "leap-frog" system envisaged by the Law Lords which are of equal, or even greater, application to the conditions in India. The first is that the "leap-frog" system, as envisaged, would deprive the Supreme Court of the benefit of the judgment of the High Court. "It is not to be forgotten *** that the judgments of the House of Lords have acquired and enjoy a world wide reputation, and they act as final and binding precedents in all Courts in the United Kingdom. In the absence of the Court of Appeal judgments it would be more difficult for the House to maintain its primacy-at least, unless their deliberations were greatly prolonged."1

In the same way, the law declared by the Supreme Court of India is binding on all the Courts in the country and we think that it is essential that it should have the assistance of a considered judgment of the highest tribunal in the State.

1. Final Report of the Committee on Supreme Court Practice and Procedure, p. 159, para. 495.

Proposal rejected.- Secondly, in England the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary are selected from Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as from England and it was pointed out that upon an appeal from England, the members of the House sitting who came from the other parts of the Kingdom would be under a real disadvantage in the absence of the judgment of the Courts of Appeal. In India also, the Judges of the Supreme Court are recruited from all parts of the country. On an appeal coming from one State in India, the Judges of the Supreme Court sitting in appeal who come from different parts of the country would be under a disadvantage in the absence of the expository judgment of the High Court on all questions pertaining to local law, usage, custom, etc. We are, therefore, unable to recommend any such innovation in this country.

Even in England, though the Evershed Committee recommended the introduction of the system in a modified form hemmed in by a number of safeguards, its recommendation does not appear to have been implemented.

19. Second Appeals.-

The position with regard to second appeals in the High Courts in the years 1955 and 1956 appears from the statements below:

Table E

Comparative Table Showing The Institution, Disposal and Pendency of Second Appeals in The High Courts of The Various States During The Years 1954 and 1955

Name of the State	Pending at the beginning of the year		Instituted		Total for disposal		Disposed of		Pending at the close of the year		Remarks
	1954	1955	1954	1955	1954	1955	1954	1955	1954	1955
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Andhra	3014	2999	482	1001	3496	4000	497	1444	2999	2556	*Actual number of second appeals disposed of was only 1656; the rest were transferred to the Andhra High Court.
Assam	179	168	111	158	290	326	122	122	168	204
Bihar	5372	5920	1881	2014	7253	7934	1333	1958	5920	5976
Bombay	1125	1490	1375	1596	2500	3086	1010	1430	1490	1656
Madhya Pradesh	2896	2700	842	1061	3738	3761	1038	871	2700	2890
Madras	7065	3881	1561	1374	8626	5255	4745*	1829	3881	3426	(A) The figures shown against this State relate to the official years 1954-55 and 1955-56
Mysore(A)	910	1022	614	560	1524	1582	502	301	1022	1281
Orissa	1892	1339	294	282	2186	1621	867	901	1339	734
Punjab	2280	2245	1198	1080	3478	3325	1233	913	2245	2412
Rajasthan	1658	1864	671	613	2329	2477	465	481	1864	1996
Travncore-Cochin	2497	1843	1111	1165	3608	3008	1765	1507	1843	1501
Uttar Pradesh	9123	10067	2628	2976	11805	13034	1738	2570	10067	10464
West Bengal	4638	4389	1430	1650	6068	6039	1679	1401	4389	4638

Second Appeals. Curtailment of the right to prefer.- We have, in a later chapter, recommended a stricter and better scrutiny of second appeals under Order XLI, rule 11. Such a course would, we think, avoid the necessity of a resort to the drastic remedy of a total abolition of second appeals.

20. Abolition not desirable.-

The principle suggested by us in our Questionnaire that there should be only one appeal in civil cases followed by a revision on the ground of miscarriage of justice provoked considerable opposition.

The High Court's powers in revision under section 115 of the Civil Procedure Code are, unlike those in section 435 of the Criminal Procedure Code, strictly limited to cases of erroneous assumption or non-assumption of jurisdiction' or of illegality or material irregularity in the exercise of jurisdiction by the Courts below. The proposal for cutting out second appeals altogether, leaving the aggrieved party to move the High Court in revision, would be impracticable without enlarging the scope of the revisional jurisdiction.

It must be recognised that important questions of law sometimes do arise even in cases outside the limits of section 115 on which the highest tribunal in the State may be required to pronounce judgment and give authoritative guidance. To enlarge the scope of section 115 would be tantamount to substituting one class of proceedings for another, and will not take us any nearer the solution of the problem of curtailing too many hearings of the same matter.

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