On Saturday, the Supreme Court reiterated that while hearing a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, a High Court can't convert itself into a 'Court of Appeal'.

CASE TITLE: MOHD. INAM vs SANJAY KUMAR SINGHAL & ORS.

CASE FACTS:

In this case the Rent Controller and Eviction Officer has allowed in the landlord's application and passed a final order under Section 16 of U.P. Urban Buildings (Regulation of Letting, Rent and Eviction) Act, 1972, declaring the suit premises 'vacant'.

Aggrieved by the order, the appeallant herein approached the District Judge who then allowed the a revision petition filed by the appeallant/tenant and set aside the orders passed by Eviction Officer. T

To this, the Landlord went to High Court and filed a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution which the Court duely allowed and accordingly set aside the order of District Judge stating that the District Judge had committed illegality in entertaining the joint revision filed against the vacancy order as well as the final order.

The appeallant thus challenged the HC's judgement in Top Court.

SC VERDICT:

In backdrop of the submissions and material on record, the Apex Court bench comprising of Justice Navin Sinha and Justice BR Gavai observed that the High Court failed to take into consideration and act as per the the legal position expounded in Achal Misra vs. Rama Shanker Singh wherein it was held, that even if a party does not challenge the vacancy order by way of writ petition, it is still open to it to challenge the same order along with the final order passed under Section 16 in the revision under Section 18.

In view of this, the bench observed that the District Judge was fully justified in interfering with the order passed by the Rent Controller and Eviction Office.

It thus accordingly set aside the High Court order while observing that it erred in interfering with the well reasoned order passed by the District Judge while exercising the jurisdiction of the High Court under Article 227 of the Constitution of India.

The Court stated:

"It is a well settled principle of law, that in the guise of exercising jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, the High Court cannot convert itself into a court of appeal. It is equally well settled, that the supervisory jurisdiction extends to keeping the subordinate tribunals within the limits of their authority and seeing that they obey the law. It has been held, that though the powers under Article 227 are wide, they must be exercised sparingly and only to keep subordinate courts and Tribunals within the bounds of their authority and not to correct mere errors. "

 The Top Court remarked that the exercise of jurisdiction by the High Court under Article 227 in the present case was patently unwarranted and unjustified.

The judgement was passed by bench comprising of Justice Navin Sinha and Justice BR Gavai on 26-6-2020.

Read Judgement Here:

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