Scope of Revisional jurisdiction under section 21 of A.P. Land Ceiling Act.

Revisional jurisdiction do not entitle to upset the pure findings of fact recorded by the appellate jurisdiction.

Section 21 of the Andhra Pradesh Land Reforms (Ceiling on Agricultural Holdings) Act, 1973 (Act 1 of 1973) reads as under :

“21. Revision :- An application for revision from any party aggrieved, including the Government, shall lie to the High Court, within the prescribed period, from any order passed on appeal by the Appellate Tribunal on any of the following grounds, namely :-

(a) that it exercised a jurisdiction not vested in it by law, or

(b) that it failed to exercise a jurisdiction so vested, or

(c) that it acted in the exercise of its jurisdiction illegally or with material irregularity.” A mere look at the section shows that it is pan materia with Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure which is identically worded.

So far as Section 115 is concerned, the scope and ambit of the revisional jurisdiction under the said Section as conferred on the High Court is now well settled by a series of decisions of this Court. It is obvious that the revisional jurisdiction under Section 115, C.P.C. or for that matter under pan materia provision of Section 21 of the Act is not an appellate jurisdiction and pure finding of fact reached by the court of appeal could not be interfered with. The Court can interfere in revision only when it is satisfied that the findings reached by the court below suffer from any jurisdictional errors.

A.P. Land Reforms Rules, 1974, Rule 17

So far as the first part of sub-rule (1) of Rule 17 is concerned, it deals with the period for filing application in the High Court and the amount of Court-fees to be affixed. So far as sub-rule(2) is concerned, it say that the Rules issued by the High Court from time to time for filing applications for revision shall apply multatis mutandis to the revision under Section 21 of the Act. Therefore, the procedure laid down by the Appellate Side Rules for filing revision application under Section 115, CPC or under any other Act may apply to revision application under Section 21 of the Act. It is obvious that by such procedural rules, the scope and ambit of Section 21 as enacted by the Legislature cannot either be extended nor can be curtailed.

Whatever the above rule might have said, the jurisdiction of the High Court under Section 21 of the Act is to be culled out from Section 21 itself and the Rules as stated earlier cannot extend that jurisdiction. Consequently, it must be held that the impugned order passed in exercise of jurisdiction under Section 21 of the Act had travelled beyond the limited scope of revisional jurisdiction while it tried to upset the pure findings of fact reached by the final Court of fact, namely, the Appellate Tribunal.

[Source: State of Andhra Pradesh vs. Vatsvyi Kumara Venkata Krishna Verma]