Calcutta High Court
Balaram Das vs Guru Charan Biswas on 30 August, 2022
IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA
Ordinary Original Civil Jurisdiction
Original Side
Present:
The Hon'ble Justice Shekhar B. Saraf
IA NO. GA/30/2021
With
IA NO. GA/31/2022
With
IA NO. GA/32/2022
With
IA NO. GA/33/2022
With
IA NO. GA/34/2022
IN
CS NO. 308 OF 1872
BALARAM DAS.
Versus
GURU CHARAN BISWAS.
For the Petitioner : Mr. Pankaj Halder, Advocate,
Mr. Subah Ch. Basu, Advocate
Mr. Avijit Sarkar, Advocate
Mr. S. Balial, Advocate
For the Trustees of Dakshineswar : Mr. Amitesh Banerjee, Sr. Advocate,
Kali Temple & Debottar Estate Mr. Roibat Banerji, Advocate
Ms. Natasha Roy, Advocate
Last Heard on : August 23, 2022
Judgment on : August 30, 2022
2
Shekhar B. Saraf, J.:
1.
By an order dated March 10, 2022 in G.A. 30 of 2021, this Court had
appointed Justice Jyotirmay Bhattacharya, Former Chief Justice of
Calcutta High Court as the Chairman cum Special Officer of the
Dakhineswar Kali Temple and Debottar Estate, Kolkata wherein he was
directed to hold elections for constituting the new Board of Trustees of
the said Temple and Estate. In pursuant to this order, a report was
submitted by him on June 02, 2022, and the same is pending for
approval before this Court.
2. Subsequently, the parties have filed several interlocutory applications
seeking various directions from the Court.
3. First things first - the applicants in G.A No. 31/2022, G.A. No.
32/2022 and G.A. No. 33/2022 have sought modification or recall of
the said order dated March 10, 2022. The applicants contend that the
Court was not apprised of the order dated January 22, 2022 in G.A. No.
29 of 2021 leading to suppression of material facts before this Court.
However, the said application G.A. 29 of 2021 was dismissed as
withdrawn on March 05, 2021, and that order passed in it not only is
not in existence any more but also bears no relevance or application as
far as the present applications before me are concerned. Further, in the
said G.A. 29 of 2021, the Hon'ble Judge did not make any observations
and the order therein contained only reflections of the issues raised by
the counsels. Therefore in my view, the prayer seeking modification or
recall of order dated March 10, 2022 ought to be rejected.
4. The counsel also contends that the order dated March 10, 2022 of this
Court was passed in a dead suit since the original parties are long
dead. In furtherance of his argument, the counsel cited two judgments,
the first one being the judgment of this Court in Biswanath Pal -v-
Satya Prakash Chandra reported in (2014) 4 ICC 585 and other one
being the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Gurnam Singh
(D) Thr. Lrs. -v- Gurbachan Kaur(D) by Lrs. reported in (2017) 13
SCC 414. The relevant portion of the Supreme Court judgment is
extracted below -
"18. On the death of a party to the appeal, if no application is made
by the party concerned to the appeal or by the legal representatives
of the deceased on whom the right to sue has devolved for
substitution of their names in place of the deceased party within 90
days from the date of death of the party, such appeal abates
automatically on expiry of 90 days from the date of death of the
party. In other words, on the 91st day, there is no appeal pending
before the Court. It is "dismissed as abated".
5. This Court agrees that the parties to the original appeal might be dead
unless they're over 150 years old and a world record for the oldest
human alive is being broken. But the material facts of the judgments
cited by the counsel starkly differ from the present one at hand. This
isn't an ordinary suit but rather an administrative one under the
control of this Court. When it comes to this administrative suit, the
Court is at liberty to allow the Trustees/sebaits to apply for the
implementation of the Scheme in connection with the administration of
Dakhineswar Temple and Debottar Estate.
6. Upon hearing the parties, this Court is of the view that since the order
dated March 10, 2022 for which modification/revocation has been
sought has already been complied with and even if this Court was to
stay/modify that order, none of the parties will achieve anything
substantial from such a direction. Moreover, there is no suppression of
facts as alleged by the counsel on behalf of the sebaits. Therefore, as far
as the application for modification of the order dated March 10, 2022 of
this Court goes, the same stands dismissed.
7. As for the other prayers raised in G.A. No. 31 of 2022, G.A. No. 32 of
2022, and G.A. No. 33 of 2022, this Court is not dealing with them on
merits as the same has become infructuous on account of the fact that
the elections have already been held and that a challenge to the same
has been raised in G.A. No. 34 of 2022. This Court will deal with these
issues when it takes up G.A. No. 30 of 2021 for approval of the report of
Chairman-cum-Special Officer and the elections conducted in his aegis,
and G.A. No. 34 of 2022 regarding the challenge to the elections of the
Board of Trustees and the conduct of the Chairman-cum-Special
Officer appointed by this Court.
8. In G.A. No. 31 of 2022, G.A. No. 32 of 2022 and G.A. No. 33 of 2022, as
far as prayers other than the one regarding modification/recall of the
order dated March 10, 2022 of this Court are concerned, I clarify that
there are no observations passed by this Court on the merits of those
other prayers.
9. For the reasons discussed above, G.A. No. 31 of 2022, G.A. No. 32 of
2022, and G.A. No. 33 of 2022 are disposed of.
10. The parties are at liberty to mention GA No. 30 of 2021 and GA No. 34
of 2022 for inclusion in the list.
11. Urgent photostat certified copy of this order, if applied for, should be
made available to the parties upon compliance with the requisite
formalities.
(SHEKHAR B. SARAF, J.)
