Jagdish Chandra Mishra, J. - (1.) THIS petition has been filed for quashing the judgment and decree dated 15.12.86 passed by the respondent No. 1 IV Additional District Judge, Gorakhpur. It has been contended that the respondent No. 1 while exercising his revisional powers under Section 25 of Small Causes Courts Act had no jurisdiction to re -assess the evidence and to substitute the finding recorded by the Judge S.C.C. The learned counsel for the contesting respondent contended that the revisional Court had power to re -assess the evidence. The learned counsel for the petitioner contended that the powers of the revisional Court are very limited and only the question of law can be gone into.
(2.) IN Ram Narain v. K.I. Vishwakarma : 1965 ALJ 989, it was held that the District Judge has power to satisfy himself that a decree or order made in any case decided by the Court of Small Causes was according to law. He is not empowered to look into the evidence of the case and to deiced whether the finding of fact arrived at by the Court below is justified by the evidence on record or not. In another case Laxmi Kishore and another v. Har Prasad Shukla : 1981 Allahabad Rent Case 515, the Division Bench after considering the various pronouncements including the Supreme Court's dictum in Malim Ayyappa Narcker v. Seth Manghraj Udhavadas firm : AIR 1969 SC 1344, held that if the revisional Court finds that there is no evidence to sustain the finding on a particular issue of fact it can ignore that finding. Same will be the case where the finding is based only on inadmissible evidence. In such cases the Court will be justified in deciding the question of fact itself because the evidence is all one way. No assessment is needed. The Court can also decide the revision if only a question of law or some preliminary point of law, viz Validity of notice, is sufficient for its decision. It was further observed "But if it finds that a particular finding of fact is vitiated by an error of law, it has power to pass such order as the justice of the case requires, but it has no jurisdiction to reassess or reappraise the evidence in order to determine an issue of fact for itself. If it cannot dispose of the case adequately without a finding on a particular issue of fact, it should send the case back after laying down proper guidelines. It cannot enter into the evidence, assess it and determine an issue of fact."
(3.) HON 'ble J.C. Gupta, J. in Kailash Chandra and another v. IIIrd Additional District Judge, Jalaun and others, : 1998 (34) ALR 643, after considering the various provisions of the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act, and decisions of the Supreme Court and this Court elucidated and summarised the powers of the High Court or of the District Court while exercising the revisional powers under Section 25 of the Act. It was held that it is open to the revisional Court to make interference with the decision of the trial Court in case the same is not found to be according to law. Yet it is not open to it to substitute its own findings with regard to the question of fact already determined by the Court below. Despite the finding that interference was necessary the revisional Court should not go into the issue for the first time and it had no right to decide that issue of fact for itself. It was held that revisional Court can ignore the finding of fact recorded by the trial Court and record its own finding on the following grounds: - - (a) where the finding of the trial Court is based on no evidence or in other words there is absolutely no evidence on record to sustain a particular finding of fact. (b) where the finding is solely based on inadmissible evidence, or (c) where the finding is perverse in the sense that no reasonable man could have ever reached to the conclusion arrived at by the Court below. The learned Single Judge further held: The power of revisional Court even where it make interference in finding of fact is that it should not substitute its own finding of fact for that recorded by the trial Court unless of course the evidence was all the one way and there has been no assessment of the same by the trial Court, where the Court finds that a particular finding of fact suffers from an error of law the revisional Court has the power to pass such orders as the justice of the case requires but it has no jurisdiction to reassess or re -appraise the evidence in order to determine an issue of fact for itself. The appropriate course in such circumstances is to send the case back to the trial Court for fresh decision after laying down appropriate guidelines.;