Jurisdiction to entertain suit based on contract depends on where the cause of action arises, not just where the contract is made.

Bhagwati, J.

1. His Lordship, after stating facts, proceeded:] Before I proceed to discuss the merits of the case, I shall first deal with what could have been urged as a preliminary objection or could have been asked to be tried as a preliminary issue, viz., whether this Court has jurisdiction to entertain this suit. The contention of the defendant in this behalf has been that he was residing in and carrying on business in Delhi that the contract was made by the acceptance by him of the offer of the plaintiffs in Delhi, that the performance of the contract was to be made and was in fact offered by the plaintiffs to him in Delhi, that the breach of the contract, if any, took place in Delhi and that therefore the whole cause of action having arisen in Delhi, this Court has no jurisdiction to try this suit in spite of the leave under Clause 12, Letters Patent having been granted. It is clear on the correspondence which has been put in before me that the offer to sell the 110 shares, though communicated by the plaintiffs by their telegram dated 3-10-1946, was received by the defendant in Delhi and he accepted the said offer by his telegram dated 4-10-1946 in Delhi. There is also no doubt that the performance of the contract offered by the plaintiffs to the defendant at Delhi by sending the share certificates together with the relative transfer forms and also the draft to the defendant was in Delhi. The breach, if any, by the defendant also took place in Delhi, because he refused to retire the draft in Delhi. Nothing further hap pened and there was no question of any part of the cause of action having arisen in Bombay.

2. Counsel for the plaintiffs, however, argued that this was a case not under the Civil P. C., but under Clause 12, Letters Patent, and what the Court had got to consider was not where the contract was made hut whether a part of the cauce of action had in fact arisen in Bombay. He contended that even though ordinarily a contract could be said to have been made in the place where the offer was accepted, there was a difference which obtained when you came to consider whether a part of the cause of action in a suit on contract did arise within jurisdiction. He relied upon the observations of Pulton J., in Dobson and Barlow v. Bengal Spinning and Weaving Co., 21 Bom. 126 where the learned Judge observed (p. 134) :

"But if tbe making of the contract be part of the cause of action, it appears to follow that the act of concurrence of either party which is essential to the contract is itself a part of the cause of action, for without such act of concurrence the contract cannot come Into existence."

Belying upon these observations he contended that the offer which was an act of concurrence on the part of the plaintiffs and without which the contract could not have been made in Delhi by the acceptance by the defendant there, had certainly been sent by the plaintiffs from Bombay, and that, therefore, a part of the cause of action had certainly arisen within jurisdiction. This being a decision of a Judge of co-ordinate jurisdiction, I would have been bound to follow the same provided, however, that it considered the various aspects of the question and was really a decision on the point which is at issue before me. It is well-known that the general observations which are to be found in the various authorities have got to be construed with reference to the facts and circumstances of the cases in which they have been made. The case before Fulton J., was a case where the agreement which was the subject-matter of the suit was signed in Bombay by the party whose act of concurrence was considered by the learned Judge as investing this Court with jurisdiction. In such a case there could not be the slightest doubt that whether the matter was looked at from the point of view of the cause of action having arisen within jurisdiction or from the point of view of the contract being made within jurisdiction, there was not the slightest di