Surat Goods Transport Pvt. Ltd. Co. vs Asharam Someshwar Suthar And Ors. on 12 July, 1982
In Moosa Suleman Salehji v. Secretary of State, AIR 1929 Cal 135, the facts were that the same set of appellants had filed four appeals against the decision of the District Judge in four land acquisition matters relating to the compensation awarded for acquisition of four plots of land. There was a common respondent in each appeal, viz. the Secretary of State. The appellants made an application praying that all the four appeals may be consolidated: in effect, the prayer was that the memoranda of appeals in all those cases should be considered as one memorandum of appeal and that after having done that, Section 17 of the Court-fees Act, 1870, which is in pari materia with Section 18 of our Court-fees Act, should be applied and that they should be allowed to pay Court-fees on the consolidated value of all the four appeals instead of paying Court-fees for each appeat separately, as they were bound to do under ordinary circumstances. The Division Bench, which considered the application, observed that there was no objection to consolidating a number of appeals in the exercise of the inherent jurisdiction oi the Court, if the matter for consideration in a number of appeals was the same and the parties also were the same. However, it was another matter when the aid of Section 17 was sought to be invoked on the allegation that the memorandum of appeal in each of those four cases should be consolidated into one memorandum of appeal and treated as if it was one memorandum embracing two or more distincts subjects. Such consolidation could not possibly be permitted in terms, the Division Bench observed as follows at page 136 :--