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Showing contexts for: devolution of powers in A.T. Sankaralinga Mudaliar vs Narayana Mudaliar And Ors. on 25 April, 1922Matching Fragments
Oldfield, J.
2. I agree, Coutts Trotter, J.
3. I am of the same opinion. It seems to me perfectly clear that we have no express statutory authority to grant costs generally in criminal matters and moreover, as my Lord has pointed out where the Code intends to confer the power of granting costs, it does so in terms. But then it is said that, apart from any question of the Code the court has an inherent jurisdiction to put matters right as between those who seek its aid by the granting of costs. The Courts of Equity in England always asserted their possession of such jurisdiction and constantly used it as is pointed out in the judgment of Lord Chancellor Hardwidke in Corporation of Bur ford v. Lenthall 2 Atk. to 550 . The Common Law Courts did not attempt to assert their possession of such an inherent jurisdiction and it was often emphatically denied at any rate by equity lawyers, but the House of Lords in Guardians of West Ham Union v. Churchwarden and Co. of St. Mathew, Bethnal Green (1896) A.C. 477, undoubtedly laid down that as and by virtue of its position as the highest court in the land and not by any devolution of powers from courts of equity they had jurisdiction to deal with costs in cases whether arising from the equity or the common law side of the court. But I think that the main reason why it is not possible for this Court to adopt that line of reasoning and take upon itself the awarding of costs in criminal cases is this Revision is not an inherent power of this or any other court; the whole machinery of revision is a creature of statute and has to be found within the four walls of the Code of Criminal Procedure; and, so far as criminal cases are concerned I do not sec how we can posit? an inherent power in ourselves to supplement that purely statutory machinery by assuming to ourselves the inherent power of supplementing it by the awarding of costs. I therefore, am of the opinion that we have no power to do what is asked. It is for the legislature to consider whether the power of revision in cases of the kind that we have seen in these proceedings has not outlived its usefulness or, at any rate, whether it should not be safeguarded by the arming of courts with the power, at least in cases where revisional proceedings are taken by private prosecutors and not by the Crown, of mulcting them in proper cases by the award of costs.