A Sessions Judge can assign urgent applications for bail to an Additional Sessions Judge not only when he is physically incapable of acting but also when he is otherwise unable to act due to pressure of other work.

1. This Miscellaneous Petition under Section 439(2), Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, is for cancellation of the bail granted to the accused persons in P.R.C. No.1 of 1975 on the file of the Additional Munsif Magistrate's Court, Chirala.

2. The Additional Munsif Magistrate, Chirala committed the accused persons to take their trial for offences punishable under Ss.120-B, 120-B read with 302, 201 and 466 I.P.C. under an order dated 10-2-1976. All the accused persons were or bail before they were taken into custody in pursuance to the committal order. They preferred urgent applications for bail under Crl. M.P. Nos.35 and 37 of 1976 before the Sessions Judge, Ongole on 10-2-1976 itself. On each of these two applications, the learned Sessions Judge passed the following order.

"P.P. is given notice. Made over to the Additional Sessions Judge, for disposal,'"

The applications having thus been sent to the Additional Sessions Judge, the learned Additional Sessions Judge passed orders granting bail to all the accused under his order dated 10-2-1976.

3. Sri T.V. Sarma, the petitioner herein raised only one contention and that is in regard to the jurisdiction of the Additional Sessions Judge to pass the orders of bail in favour of the Accused. It is argued that an Additional Sessions Judge has no jurisdiction to dispose of an application for bail except when he is validly invested with such jurisdiction by the Sessions Judge under the circumstances mentioned in Section 10(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It is vehemently argued that though the provision in Section 10(3) in the Code is almost the same as the provision in Sec.17(4), of the Old Code, the Legislature has purposefully changed the word "incapacity" in the old Section 17(4) to the word "inability" in the Section 10(3) of the new Code and that no Sessions Judge can make over any application for bail to an Additional Sessions Judge except when he is actually absent from the court or is physically unable to dispose of the application. Another ground of attack of Sri Sarma against the validity of the order of the Sessions Judge making over the application for bail to the Additional Sessions Judge is that the Sessions Judge passed only a bald order of "made over" without mentioning the reasons for making over the hail applications. Sri Sarma contends that in so far as the order of the Sessions Judge making over the applications to the Additional Sessions Judge is illegal, the Additional Sessions Judge did not have any valid jurisdiction to dispose of the applications. It is therefore urged that the order passed by the Additional Sessions Judge granting hail should be cancelled.

4. Section 194 of the Code provides for transfer of trial cases by the Sessions Judges to the Additional or Assistant Sessions Judges. Section 481 deals with the transfer of criminal appeals white Section 400 deals with the transfer of revision cases. As rightly contended by Sri Sarma, the only provision under which a Sessions Judge can make over an application for bail to an Additional Sessions Judge is Section 10(3) of the new Code which reads:

"The Sessions Judge may also make provision for the disposal of any urgent application, in the event of his absence or inability to act, by an Additional or Assistant Sessions Judge, or, if there be no Additional or Assistant Sessions Judge, b; the Chief Judicial Magistrate, and every such Judge or Magistrate shall be deemed to have jurisdiction to deal with any such application."

Section 17(4) of the Old Code was as follows:-

"The Sessions Judge may also, when he himself is unavoidably absent or incapable of acting, make provision for the disposal of any urgent application by an Additional or Asst. Sessions Judge or if there be no Additional or Assistant Sessions Judge, by the District Magistrate, and such Judge or Magistrate shall have jurisdiction to deal with any such application."

5. Admittedly in the instant case, the Sessions Judge was not absent. The only q