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3. The appellants are ryots of three villages included in the Parlakimedi estate in the district of Ganjam in the Northern Circars. The respondents are (1) the Zemindar of Parlakimedi and (2) the Board of Revenue at Madras.

3. In October, 1925, the zemindar applied, under Chap. XI of the Madras Estates Land Act, for the settlement of rent in respect of these villages and by a supplemental application in March, 1926, which was inspired by a decision just previously given by the High Court of Madras in Valluri Narasimha Rao v. The Ryots of Peddamamidipalli (1925) .L.R. 49 Mad. 499, he applied for settlement of a "fair and equitable rent" under Section 168(1) of the Act. The Government of Madras in November 1927 directed the Special Revenue Officer of the District to settle a fair and equitable rent in respect of lands in the said villages. After memoranda had been submitted by the contesting parties and after elaborate investigations on the spot, the Special Revenue Officer in 1935 made an order doubling the previous rents. On the ryots appeal to the Board of Revenue, a member of that Board sitting alone reversed this decision and allowed an increase of rent of only twelve and a half per cent., considering himself bound by proviso (b) of Clause (1) of Section 30, which (for the cases to which it applies) runs as follows :

It is a sufficiently accurate statement for the purposes of this case to say, that, as the result of this and subsequent legislation, the criminal jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (apart from crimes maritime) was limited to the local limits except as to British subjects, and the Court had no general control or power over mofussil criminal courts. The Common Law was similarly limited in its application to the Presidency towns and to British subjects outside the local limits.

47. It is necessary now to consider the question whether jurisdiction to issue certiorari in such a case as the present accrued to the High Court, or would have accrued to the Supreme Court, by virtue of the fact that the location of the Board of Revenue is within the Presidency-town. The Town of Madras has, since 1726, been considered to be governed by the principles of English law, though not all the provisions of that law have been received as applicable to the circumstances of the country; and the British statutes passed since 1726 have not been given effect unless specially extended to India. The Board of Revenue, as already noticed, was established in 1786, and at various times has discharged different functions some of them judicial in character. See Mad. Regn. I of 1803 and Regn. II of 1806. By Regn. V of 1804 it became a Court of Wards for the Presidency. Under Regn. VII of 1817, it had for many years control over religious and other endowments. Their Lordships will not assume that in 1800 it would have been regarded as a Court. For the purposes of the present case, it may here be said also that in giving directions under Section 172 of the Madras Estates Land Act, 1908, the Board of Revenue is to be considered not as a Court, or as the highest Court in a hierarchy of Revenue Courts, but as an official body especially entrusted with particular duties which include duties of a judicial character. The Mandasa cases, Raja of Mandasa v. Jagannayakulu and Zamindarini. of Mandasa v. Ryots of Mandasa Zamindari, show that, this view is in accordance with the opinion of the High Court. The Board of Revenue has always had its offices in the Presidency-town, and in the present case the Collective Board, which made the order complained of, issued this order in the town. On the other hand the parties are not subject to the original jurisdiction of the High Court, and the estate of Parlakimedi lies in the north of the province. On the present question their Lordships lay no stress on any negative implication derivable from Clause 47 of the charter which authorised the Supreme Court to issue writs of mandamus, certiorari, etc., to the justices and other Magistrates of the town and to the two Courts therein mentioned, the Court of Request and the Court of Quarter Sessions. The terms of this clause make it difficult to think that Courts other than those mentioned were intended to be regarded as inferior Courts for this purpose. The case of Besant v. Advocate-General of Madras (1919) L.R. 46 I.A. 176 : S.C. 21 Bom. L.R. 864 is an authority of this Board that the power to issue certiorari still remains in the High Courts of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay in the exercise of their local jurisdiction. On this point it confirmed the decision in Nundo Lal Bose v. The Corporatian for the town of Calcutta (1885) I.L.R. 11 Cal. 275 where certiorari was issued to bring up and quash an assessment made by the Commissioners of the town of Calcutta on a certain dwelling house, it being held that the error in the assessment was an error which went to jurisdiction. The question is whether the principle of that case can be applied in the present case to the settlement of rent for land in Ganjam, merely on the basis of the location of the Board of Revenue, as a body which is ordinarily resident or located within the town of Madras, or on the basis that the order complained of was made within the town. If so, it would seem to follow that the jurisdiction of the High Court would be avoided by the removal of the Board of Revenue beyond the outskirts of the town, and that it would never attach but for the circumstance that an appeal is brought to, or proceedings in revision taken by, the Board of Revenue. Their Lordships think that the question of jurisdiction must be regarded as one of substance, and that it would not have been within the competence of the Supreme Court to claim jurisdiction over such a matter as the present by issuing certiorari to the Board of Revenue on the strength of its location in the town. Such a view would give jurisdiction to the Supreme Court, in the matter of the settlement of rents for ryoti holdings in Ganjam between parties not otherwise subject to its jurisdiction, which it would not have had over the Revenue Officer who dealt with the matter at first instance.