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Showing contexts for: parlakimedi in A. Karuppa Chetty Goundan vs The Board Of Commissioners For Hindu ... on 6 December, 1948Matching Fragments
2. A preliminary objection was taken that this Court has no jurisdiction to issue a writ of certiorari because of the ruling of the Judicial Committee in Ryots of Garabando v. Zamindar of Parlakimedi (1943) 2 M.L.J. 254 : L.R. 70 I.A. 129 : I.L.R. 1944 Mad. 457 (P.C.). The temple is admittedly situated outside the presidency town and the subject matter is the right of the petitioner to the office of trustee in the temple. Mr. Ramamurthi the learned Counsel for the petitioner, contended that the decision of the Judicial Committee in the Parlakimedi case would not apply to the facts of this case on account of two facts: (1) the Board of Commissioners for Hindu Religious Endowments must be treated as an inhabitant of the presidency town; and (2) the subject matter in dispute between the Board on the one hand and the petitioner on the other must be deemed to have arisen here. We are unable to accept his contentions. The Judicial Committee refused to accept the position that by the mere location of its office in the presidency town the Board of Revenue could be deemed to be an inhabitant thereof within the meaning of Section 8 of the Letters Patent. Their Lordships treated the Board of Revenue not as an ordinary subject but as an official body entrusted with particular duties including duties of a judicial character. The same reasoning would apply to the case of the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Board which has been entrusted by statute with duties of a judicial character. In fact, it is because it is treated as an inferior tribunal that the petitioner has sought from this Court a writ of certiorari.
3. The second ground urged by the learned Counsel is based on a fallacy. It is not right to consider the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Board as a. private party between whom and the petitioner there was a depute. In cases relating to a public trust where proceedings are taken for the framing of a scheme or for the removal of undesirable trustees, in one sense it may be true that there is no private right of parties which is the subject matter of adjudication. But even there it can be said that there is a Us between the trustees on the one side and the deity represented by other trustees or by worshippers or by the Advocate-General on the other side. What is really of importance is that in such cases the Court, if it is a Court which is entrusted with powers to frame a scheme or to dismiss a trustee or, the Board, when invested with such powers, is not in the position of a private party interested in one side or the other. Taking the present: case we find that there was an application by the managing trustee for the removal of the petitioner. If it was not by the managing trustee, it might have been by the worshippers or an officer of the Board. What the Board was called upon was to make an impartial inquiry and to arrive at findings in the same manner as a Court would, if called upon to exercise such functions. In a case like this, the question of jurisdiction must be regarded as one of substance as their Lordships pointed out in the Parlakimedi case and jurisdiction must depend upon the subject matter in dispute; and that in this case, is the right to the office of trustee in a mofussil temple.