The main legal point established in the judgment is the court's equitable discretion and inherent jurisdiction under Section 151 of Code of Civil Procedure 1908 and the Letters Patent, especially in cases involving estates and uncontested matters.

JUDGMENT :

1. This is very unfortunate case. The original testamentary probate petition is of 2015, now pending for almost seven years. It has not progressed in the following circumstances. On 9th January 2017, there was common conditional order under the High Court Rules made by a learned Single Judge of this Court. That order, a copy of which at page 6, said that all office objections and filing defects were to be cured by 27 February 2017 with no possibility of an extension. In default, the petitions were to stand dismissed. This order covered many petitions from Sr Nos to 901 to 1452, except three matters that were segregated. The present Petition was one of those covered by that order. Its filing defects remained to be cured. The petition stood dismissed. It seems that a Notice of Motion No 25 of 2018 came to be filed for restoration. Oddly, that Petition was affirmed and made in the name of the Petitioner’s advocate rather than being in the Petitioner’s name with the Petitioner’s affirmation and signature. There is no point in dwelling on this. The matter was listed before me on 1st March 2018. Neither the Petitioner nor her Advocate were present. Nonetheless, I restored the Petition to file and said that office objections were to be removed before 2nd April 2018, failing which the Petition would stand dismissed without further reference to the Court. And then I added that it would not thereafter be restored thereafter under any circumstances.

2. Office objections were not removed. The Petition stood dismissed a second time. The Petitioner had now realised what had gone wrong. She changed her Advocate and filed Interim Application No 1 of 2019. On this, a learned Single Judge of this Court noted a statement made by Mr Kanade for the Petitioner that he would apply to the Hon’ble the Chief Justice to have the Interim Application assigned to me since I had passed the order of 1st March 2018.

3. To take the last order first, I believe this approach of requiring an application for recall or setting aside to be sent to the judge who passed the first order is entirely erroneous. These are not applications or petitions for ‘review’. They are simply applications that provide a reason why, on case-specific facts, a particular order ought to be recalled. Any successor bench can legitimately do this. There is no question of such a recall or setting aside being an order coram non judice. Particularly when dealing with litigants of limited means, and most especially in cases involving estates that are often locked up for years together, I believe we should be mindful not to let technicalities of procedure derail the justice delivery process. In fact, there is no procedural irregularity or illegality in a successor bench recalling or modifying an earlier order. The application is not on the basis that the judge or bench erred in passing the order, but that the applicant (or her lawyer) erred, and it is that error of the applicant or the lawyer that is sought to be forgiven. The application is not that the order in question is erroneous, or that there is any ground to review, but simply that justice demands a recall: either because the applicant accepts his or her error, or on the basis that no litigant should be allowed to suffer for the fault of a lawyer. These are, therefore, mea culpa cases - where the applicant is a penitent seeking exculpation. The application is for justice tempered with mercy. Such an application has nothing at all to do with which judge passed the order. It only requires an assessment of whether the applicant has made a sufficient case warranting a second (or, in this case, third) opportunity.

4. This is not the first case of this kind. In Surendrakumar Barmecha, Interim Application No. 106 of 2020 in Review Petition 8 of 2019, order dated 17th February 2021. I held:

1. The Interim Application is to condone a delay in filing a Review Petition and the review for some reason seeks recall of my routine common order of