- (1.) This appeal is directed against the judgment and order of the Kerala High court dated 10/08/1976 passed in A. S. No. 222 of 1975.
(2.) Shorn of all details the matter stands projected before us like this: In the year 1969 the plaintiffs-respondents filed a title suit before the trial court on the allegation that their father was of unsound mind and he during his lifetime had been given by the defendants-appellants an acceptance of lease by a document Ex. A-3 dated 2/01/1957. Further that by itself established no jural relationship and, on the death of their father in the year 1964, the plaintiffs-respondents had not acknowledged such jural relationship. They pleaded for a decree for possession. While the suit was pending, the Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963, 42 was in operation. But with effect from 1/01/1970 an amendment was brought about which required that should there be a question in a civil court as to whether there existed a relationship of landlord and tenant. That question, under S. 125 thereof, was required to be referred to a tribunal, set up for the purpose. The finding of the tribunal when solicited by the civil court would be the basis of the decision of the civil court. On appeal, however, to the appellate court such finding of the tribunal/trial court was open to review and correction. In other words the finding of the tribunal on the said question is not final. Learned counsel for the plaintiffs-respondents does not join issue on this proposition. Now, here, the defendants-appellants, when the suit was in progress and the question had been raised, applied to the civil court to refer the question under S. 125 of the Act to the tribunal but the same was met with stiff resistance from the plaintiffs-respondents. The trial court agreeing with them proceeded with the suit, gave a finding in favour of the defendants-appellants, and dismissed the same. The plaintiffs-respondents in appeal were successful in persuading the High court that the civil court had exceeded its jurisdiction in itself deciding the question about the jural relationship between the parties and thereupon the High court on remand ordered the trial court to refer the question to the tribunal. The effect of the defendants-appellants being granted proprietorship of the property in dispute under contemporary proceedings under S. 72-K of the said Act, was kept in abeyance to be governed by the fate of the question. This broadly is the scope of the appeal by special leave here.
(3.) We do not propose to go into all these matters for we are convinced that the High court sending the matter to the trial court for further reference to the tribunal was a futile exercise especially when the finding of the tribunal, whichever way given, would not be final. The legislature envisaging that the finding of the tribunal could be wrong, did not give it a finality and since adapting (sic) the trial court in a civil suit is required to follow it, any error therein be correctable by the appellate court. Thus having regard to the conduct of the parties, in the instant case, when they had led their evidence and had their full say in the matter, there was no occasion to give another opportunity to them to fight it de novo before the tribunal or to solicit its view on the already recorded evidence of the parties. The High court could do that exercise itself by weighing the evidence and go on to reverse, confirm or vary such finding and proceed with the other questions in the appeal on that basis.;