Karnataka High Court
Union Of India (Uoi) And Ors. vs Mysore Paper Mills Ltd. And Anr. on 10 December, 2003
Equivalent citations: II(2004)ACC6, 2005ACJ2002, ILR2004KAR1608, 2004 AIR KANT HCR 428, 2004 A I H C 823, (2004) 3 RECCIVR 347, (2004) 2 ACC 6, (2005) 3 ACJ 2002, (2004) 15 INDLD 583
Author: Tirath S. Thakur
Bench: Tirath S. Thakur, S. Abdul Nazeer
JUDGMENT Tirath S. Thakur, J.
1. These appeals arise out of two different but identical orders passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bangalore Bench, whereby an additional issue touching the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to entertain the Claims Petitions has been answered in favour of the claimants and against the appellants in these appeals.
2. It is not in our view necessary to set out the factual background in which the respondents have filed two different claim petitions before the Tribunal seeking refund of the excess fare charges allegedly recovered from them. All that need be said is that in the claim petitions filed before the Tribunal, the appellant herein raised an objection as to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to entertain such claim petitions. The Tribunal accordingly framed an issue to the following effect in both the claim petitions.
"Has this Tribunal no jurisdiction to try this application under Section 26 of the Indian. Railways Act of 1890".
By two identical orders both dt.27.2.1997, the Tribunal has answered the issue in the negative holding that it has the jurisdiction to entertain the claim petitions filed before it. Aggrieved by the said orders, the appellants have filed the present appeals to assail the correctness of the same.
3. Appearing for the claimants-respondents, in these appeals Mr. Nayar submitted that an appeal under Section 23 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987, was maintainable against every order passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal provided the same is not an interlocutory order. Since the order challenged in these appeals were according to the learned Counsel interlocutory in nature deciding the issue regarding jurisdiction of the Tribunal only the present appeals were not maintainable. Reliance in support of that contention was placed upon a decision of the Supreme Court in V.C. SHUKLA v. STATE, .
4. Mr. Sanjay Gowda, Counsel appearing for the appellants on the other hand contended that the present appeals were maintainable in as much as the impugned orders were final in so far as the Railway Claims Tribunal was concerned and finally determined the question whether the claim petitions were or were not maintainable. He submitted that the finality of the order passed by the Tribunal had to be viewed in the context of the Court or the Tribunal that passed the same and that since the order passed by the Tribunal was on the question of its jurisdiction final qua the Tribunal in the present case, the same was a final order hence appealable under Section 23. He placed reliance upon a decision of the Supreme Court in PREM BAKSHI AND ORS. v. DHARAM DEV AND ORS., in support of that submission.
Section 23 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act reads as under:
"23.Appeals: (1) Save as provided in Sub-section (2) and notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908) or in any other law, an appeal shall lie from every order, not being an interlocutory order, of the Claims Tribunal, to the High Court having jurisdiction over the place where the Bench is located.
(2) No appeal shall lie from an order passed by the Claims Tribunal with the consent of the parties.
(3) Every appeal under this section shall be preferred within a period of ninety days from the date of the order appealed against."
A plain reading of the above would show that while every order that the Tribunal may make is appealable before the High Court having jurisdiction over the area where the bench is located, no much appeal would be maintainable if the order passed by the Tribunal is an interlocutory order. The expression 'interlocutory order' has not however been defined under the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987, or in any other enactment for that matter. Assistance shall therefore have to be borrowed for interpreting the said expression from the Law Lexicons and Statutes that make use of that expression in pari materia. Black's Law Dictionary defines 'Interlocutory' thus:
'Provisional; interim; temporary; not final. Something intervening between the commencement and the end of a suit which decides some point or matter, but is not a final decision of the whole controversy. An interlocutory order or decree is one which does not finally determine a cause of action but only decides some intervening matter pertaining to the cause, and which requires further steps to be taken in order to enable the court to adjudicate the cause on the merits."
Corpus Juris Secundum( Vol. 49 P. 35) defines interlocutory order as under:
"A final judgment is one which "disposes of the cause both as to the subject matter and the parties as far as the court has power to dispose of it, while an interlocutory judgment is one which reserves or leaves some further question or direction for future determination -... Generally however, a final judgment is one which disposes of the cause both as to foe subject matter and the parties as far as the court has power to dispose of it while an interlocutory judgment is one which does not so dispose of the cause, but reserves or leaves some further question or direction for future determination."
We may also refer to Wharton's Law Lexicon which defines the terra 'interlocutory order' as under:
An Interlocutory order or Judgment is one made or given during the progress of an action, but which does not finally dispose of the rights of the parties- e.g., an order appointing a receiver or granting an injunction, and a Motion for such an order is termed an interlocutory motion."
It is evident from the meaning given by the Lexicons that an interlocutory order is an order that is not a 'final judgment' disposing of the case both as to the subject matter and the parties by the Court before whom the same is instituted. An interlocutory order would fall short of a final disposal of the entire controversy brought up before a Court or Tribunal and leave something further to be determined by such Court or Tribunal.
5. The meaning of the expression 'interlocutory order' fell for consideration even before the Supreme Court in V.C. Shukla's case relied upon by Mr. Nayar. The question there was whether an order framing charges against the accused persons was revisable before a higher court having regard to the fact that no such revision would be maintainable against an order which is interlocutory in nature. The Court reviewed the case law on the subject and placing reliance upon the meaning assigned to the expression "interlocutory order" in Law Lexicons summed up the legal position in the following words:
"22. To sum up, the essential attribute of an interlocutory order is that it merely decides some point or matter essential to the progress of the suit or collateral to the issues sought but not a final decision or judgment on the matter in issue. An intermediate order is one which is made between the commencement of an action and the entry of the judgment.
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23. Thus, summing up the natural and logical meaning of an interlocutory order, the conclusion is inescapable that an order which does not terminate the proceedings or finally decide the rights of the parties is only an interlocutory order. In other words, in ordinary sense of the term, an interlocutory order is one which only decides a particular aspect or a particular issue or a particular matter in a proceeding, suit or trial but which does not however conclude the trial at all. This would be the result if the term interlocutory order is interpreted in its natural and logical sense without having resort to Criminal Procedure Code or any other statute. That is to say, if we construe interlocutory order in ordinary parlance it would indicate the attributes, mentioned above, and this is what the term interlocutory order means when used in Section 11(1) of the Act."
6. Applying the above test to the instant case, there is no escape from the conclusion that the impugned orders passed by the Tribunal do not constitute final orders, as the entire controversy brought up before the Tribunal has not been finally determined and disposed of. All that the Tribunal has done is that it has held the claim petitions filed before it to be within its jurisdiction. Such an order does not determine the controversy or the cause of action finally either qua the parties or the Tribunal seized of the same. The impugned orders leave open other issues in particular the merits of the controversy for determination by the Tribunal. That being so, the orders passed by the Tribunal are clearly interlocutory and therefore not appealable before us.
7. We may at this stage refer to the decision of the Supreme Court in Prem Bakshi's case relied upon by Mr. Gowda. That was a case in which the Court was interpreting the provisions of Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure in the context of an order passed by the trial Court under Order VI Rule XVII of the Code. The question was whether an order permitting amendment could be said to be finally disposing of the case so as to make the same amenable to the revisional jurisdiction of the High Court under 115. Answering the question in the negative, the Supreme Court held that an order allowing the proposed amendment was not revisable as the same would not even remotely cause failure of justice or irreparable injury to any party. The respondent would declared the Court get an opportunity to file a written statement and to raise all such defenses as were otherwise open to him. While saying so, the Court gave an illustration of an order passed by a trial Court which could be revisable even when the same was an interlocutory order. It observed that if the trial Court by an interlocutory order held that it had no jurisdiction to proceed with the case or that the suit was barred by limitation, it would amount to finally deciding the case making any such order revisable under Section 115. Mr. Gowda relied upon these observations to argue that an order which an issue relating to jurisdiction of the Tribunal is decided could be treated as a final order regardless whether the finding on that issue went on way or the other. We do not think so. There is in our opinion no dispute with the said proposition. What is significant and needs to be appreciated is that in either of the two situations referred to by the Supreme Court in the illustration, the order passed by the Court was bound to bring an end to the proceedings instituted before it Any order passed by a court even when it in an interlocutory order holding that it has no jurisdiction is bound to bring an end to proceedings in that Court. So also any order by which the Court holds that the claim or the suit is barred by limitation would inevitably bring an end to the said proceedings before that Court. The present is not however one such case. In the cases at hand, the Tribunal has held that it has jurisdiction to entertain the claim petitions, which is a converse situation and only ensures that the proceedings would go on even after the passing of the order. If the Tribunal had answered the issue regarding jurisdiction against the claimant, the position may have been different, for in that case, the proceedings would have necessarily come to an end before the Tribunal. We are therefore of the view that the preliminary objection raised to the maintainability of these appeals is well founded and must accordingly prevail. These appeals are therefore dismissed as not maintainable. We however make it clear that the dismissal of these appeals will not prevent the appellants from questioning the validity of the impugned orders in an appeal that it may prefer against the final judgment/award of the Tribunal, should any such judgment or award go against the appellants.
8. We are told that the claim petitions have remained pending since the year 1992. We hope and trust that the Tribunal shall take appropriate steps to ensure an expeditious disposal of the matter to avoid unnecessary procrastination of the matter. No costs.