Full Judgment Text
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CASE NO.:
Appeal (civil) 6070 of 2007
PETITIONER:
Iqbaljit Singh
RESPONDENT:
Pritam Kaur & Anr.
DATE OF JUDGMENT: 13/12/2007
BENCH:
Tarun Chatterjee & Dalveer Bhandari
JUDGMENT:
J U D G M E N T
(Arising out of SLP)No.19385 of 2006)
O R D E R
Leave granted.
This appeal by special leave is directed against the order
dated 25th of September, 2006 passed by the High Court of
Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh in C.M.No.9803 of 2006, by
which the High Court had allowed an application filed under
Section 24 of the Code of Civil Procedure seeking transfer of
Civil Suit No.498 of 2004 (titled as Pritam Kaur vs. Iqbaljit Singh
& Anr.) pending in the Court of Additional Civil Judge, (Senior
Division), Faridabad, Haryana to the Civil Court at Chandigarh
or Panchkula. Feeling aggrieved by the aforesaid order of the
High Court, the present special leave petition has been filed in
respect of which leave has already been granted.
Having heard the learned counsel for the parties and after
going through the application under Section 24 of the Code of
Civil Procedure and the objections filed therein and other
materials on record, we are of the view that, in the facts and
circumstances of the case, the reasons offered for transfer at
the instance of the respondent could not be taken as a good
ground for transferring the suit from Faridabad to Chandigarh.
The suit, being No. 9803 of 2006, has been filed by Smt. Pritam
Kaur, the respondent herein, before the Additional Court of the
Civil Judge, (Senior Division) at Faridabad, Haryana in the year
2004. In the application for transfer, the ground for transferring
the suit was that the respondent, being an old lady, was not in a
position to pursue the case at Faridabad and, therefore, the suit
be disposed of by the court at Chandigarh and not by the Court
at Faridabad. It is true that the plaintiff-respondent is a resident
of Chandigarh and aged about 75 years, even then, we are of
the view that no ground has been made out for transfer of the
suit from Faridabad to Chandigarh. It is not in dispute that the
plaintiff-respondent herself had instituted the suit for declaration
and injunction in the Faridabad Court and prosecuted the same
for almost two years and only after the expiry of two years, the
application was filed seeking transfer. In our view, the order of
transfer passed by the High Court in the exercise of its power
under Section 24 of the Code of Civil Procedure cannot be
sustained. It was the plaintiff-respondent, as noted herein
above, who had filed the suit at Faridabad having jurisdiction to
try the same and who had prosecuted the suit for about two
years and then asked for transfer. Only because of the old age
of the respondent, the suit could not have been transferred to
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Chandigarh.
Accordingly, we set aside the impugned order and direct
the trial court at Faridabad to decide the suit, positively within
four months, without granting any unnecessary adjournment to
either of the parties. Parties are directed to co-operate and we
fix 7th of January, 2008 for appearance of the parties before the
trial court at Faridabad either in person or through their counsel.
It will be open to the parties to mention before us for further
direction, if the suit is not disposed of within the time specified
herein above.
Accordingly, the impugned order is set aside and the
appeal is allowed to the extent indicated above. There will be
no order as to costs.