The Court has the discretion to grant or revoke leave under Cl. 12 of the Letters Patent based on considerations of convenience, abuse of process, and the balance of convenience. The doctrine of forum convenience may be applied, and the Court may consider the potential risk of dismissal on the ground of limitation if the leave is revoked.

JUDGMENT

S.R. Das, J. - This is an application for revocation of the leave granted to the plaintiff under Cl. 12 of the Letters Patent to institute this suit in this Court.

2. This suit was filed with leave of this Court, on 17th April 1944, by an assignee of a claim founded on account stated in writing. The writ of summons was served on the defendants in or about the first week of May 1944 at Bhiwani where they ordinarily reside. Two of the defendants who are the applicants before me have entered appearance and the rest of the defendants have not done so. On 5th June 1944 i.e., before the time to file their written statement expired the applicants took out the present summons.

3. That this Court has jurisdiction in a proper case, to revoke the leave has not been questioned by Mr. P.C. Ghose who appears for the plaintiff. The main and indeed the sole controversy has centred round one question namely under what circumstances and on what grounds ought the Court to accede to such an application. I am indeed, grateful to Learned Counsel on both sides for the very great assistance they have given me in deciding this question.

4. The first ground urged by Mr. Khaitan was that in reality no part of the cause of action arose within the jurisdiction of this Court. The plaintiff was only an assignee of Lachmi Debi's claim. Lachmi Debi had a complete cause of action upon accounts stated and the whole of that cause of action arose outside Calcutta. She could sue at once. She assigned her rights to the plaintiff. The assignment operated as a transfer to the plaintiff of the same old cause of action as Lachmi Debi had. The assignment did not bring into being any new cause of action or any extension of the old cause of action. The plaintiff has filed this suit to enforce that old cause of action of Lachmi Debi the whole of which arose outside the jurisdiction of this Court and therefore leave should not have been granted. That the assignment does not operate as a new cause of action is clear from the fact that it gives no fresh period of limitation. Time began to run against Lachmi Debi from the date when the accounts were adjusted. The transfer of the claim by her did not give any fresh period of limitation to the transferee, the plaintiff. Mr. Khaitan drew my attention to the observations of Lord Kingsdown in Prannath Roy Chowdhury v. Rookea Begum, 7 M.I.A. 323 at p. 353 : (1 Sar. 692 (P.C.)), which was applied by Mookherjee J., in Monendra Nath Biswas v. Shamsunnessa Khatun, 21 C.L.J. 157 : (A.I.R. 1915 Cal. 629), namely that "a cause of action is not prolonged by mere transfer of title." On analogy Mr. Khaitan argued that if transfer did not operate as a prolongation of the cause of action and did not affect the bar of limitation it should not also affect the question of jurisdiction. In other words, according to Mr. Khaitan the transfer could not operate as a prolongation of the cause of action either as to time or as to space and the transferee should be limited, in the matter of choice of forum, to the Court or Courts in which the transferor could file the suit as he is limited by the period of limitation by which the assignor was limited. The argument is attractive but it appears to me that different considerations govern the two questions of limitation and jurisdiction. Limitation is a statutory bar imposed on a plaintiff, be he the original owner (if I may use the expression) of the cause of action or a transferee from him. By statute the time is made to run from a definite point of time and a definite period is fixed for enforcing a particular cause of action irrespective of the person who figures as the plaintiff. It is, therefore, quite intelligible that a cause of action is not, as regards time, prolonged by the transfer. There is no such statutory provision which confines jurisdiction for all times to come to any particular Court. Further, Mr. Khaitan's argument proceeded on the assumption that the expression "cause of action" has