The main legal point established in the judgment is that the defect in the institution of proceedings by one trustee alone was of a formal nature and could be cured by subsequent impleading of the other trustees.

( 1 ) THESE three Civil Revision Petitions under Sec. 115 of the CPC by the jain Swetambara Murthi Pujaka Samtha, said to be a public trust, are directed against the three orders, all d| 30th August 1973, made by the principal Munsiff, Bijapur on interlocutory applications in H. R. C. No. 33 of 1970, H. R. C. No. 71 of 1964 and H. R. C. No. 1 of 1970 respectively By the said orders the Court below dismissed the applications filed by the petitioner landlord invoking provisions of Order I Rule 10, sub-rule (2) read with Order VI, Rule 17 CPC. Range Gowda, J. , has referred these petitions to a Division Bench, and that is, how they are before us.

( 2 ) THE factual antecedents in so far as they are necessary for the decision of the question that arises in these petitions are the following. Petitioner herein is said, to be a public trust, the powers of management and governance respecting which are said to vest in a body of 10 trustees. Petitioner filed in the court below three petitions under the provisions of the Karnataka Rent! Control Act, 1961 seeking eviction of the respondents in these three civil revision petitions on several of the grounds' set out in the proviso to sub-sec. (l) of Sec. 21 of the said Act. The memorandum of petitions in the three eviction cases which were brought in the name of the Jain Swethambara. Murthi Pujaka Samstha , were however, signed and verified by one Ganapatchand Padamchand Shah, one of the trustees claiming to be the President of the petitioner-trust. Respondents in their statement of objections contended, inter alia, that the eviction proceedings instituted, as they came to be, by only one among the 10 trustees were not validly instituted and that no relief on foot thereof was permissible to be granted. Thereafter the petitioner filed three interlocutory applications, I. A. No. 3 in each of the cases, seeking to have the other 9 trustees impleaded as co-petitioners along with the original signatory of the petitions. This prayer for impleading and the consequent prayer for amendment are stated to have been sought by petitioners by way of ample precaution and to avoid any controversy as to the validity of the institution of the proceedings. These interlocutory applications having come to be contested by respondents the Court below passed orders d| 30th August, 1973, refusing the impleading and dismissing the interlocutory applications. The Court below took the view that the very institution of the proceedings at the instance of one alone amongst the 10 trusteer of the petitioner-trust was defective ab-initio, and that the illegality could not be cured by a subsequent impleading of the other trustees. It is the correctness of these orders that is challenged in the three revision petitions here.

( 3 ) WE have heard Sri B. V. Krishnaswamy Rao learned Councel for the petitioner in all the three cases and Sri S. K. Kulkarni, learned Counsel for the respondents. Sri Krishnaswamy Rao contended that even assuming that all the 10 trustees of the Jain Swetambara Murthi Pujaka Samastha had had to institute the proceedings jointly by subscribing their signatures to the memoranda of eviction petition in exercise of their joint powers and functions as trustees and were, accordingly, necessary parties to the proceedings, the view taken by the Court below that the amendment were not allowable proceeded on a misconception as to the nature of the defect resulting from the institution of the proceedings by one alone of the trustees. Sri Krishnaswamy Rap relying upon the decision in S. V. Danels v. Gregory Warden Friendly Trust AIR. 1959 All. 570. which in turn relied upon an earlier ruling of the Madras High Court in Thina Shanmuga Moopa-nar v. Monai ghuna Nana Subbayya Moopnar (2), submitted that the defect in the institution of the proceedings in such a case could not be said to be such as to justify the view that the petitions so instituted were mere nullities. The defect, according to the