An appellate court cannot entertain a plea of want of pecuniary jurisdiction unless it is raised at the earliest opportunity and results in a failure of justice.

( 1 ) THIS is an application for review of my order dated 3rd May 1984. The review is sought by the respondent Maj. Sohan Siagh Aurora (hereinafter referred to as the respondent) on the ground that the said order was made by me without noticing the provisions contained in Section 21 (2) of the Code of Civil Procedure (for short the Code ) and as such it suffers from a legal infirmity.

( 2 ) THE facts of the case have been given at considerable length in my order under review and I need not recapitulate the same. While setting aside the order of remand dated 25th May 1981 passed by Shri S. R. Goel, Additional District Judge and directing that the suit be re-tried and disposed of by an Additional District Judge, I also quashed the entire proceedings susbsequent to the aforesaid remand order as being without jurisdiction. The said proceedings were taken in the court of Subordinate Judge who as observed in my order under review, had pecuniary jurisdiction to try suits of the value upto Rs. 25000. 00 only whereas the value of the suit after its amendment had been enhanced to Rs. 40000. 00.

( 3 ) COUNSEL for the respondent has now invited my attention to Section 21 of the Code which runs as under :

"21 (1 ). No objection as to the place of suing shall be allowed by any Appellate or Revisional Court unless such objection was taken in the Court of first instance at the earliest possible opportunity and in all cases where issues are settled at or before such settlement and unless there has been a consequent failure of justice.

(2) No objection as to the competence of a Court with reference to the pecuniary limits of its jurisdiction shall be allowed by any Appellate or Revisional Court unless such objection was taken in the Court of first instance at the earliest possible opportunity and, in all cases where issues are settled, at or before such settlement and unless there has been a consequent failure of justice.

(3) No objection as to the competence of the executing Court with reference to the local limits of its jurisdiction shall be allowed by any Appellate or Revisional Court unless such objection was taken in the executing Court at the earliest possible opportunity, and unless there on has been a consequent failure of justice.

( 4 ) IT may be noticed that sub-sections (2) and (3) in the Section have been added by the Code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Act 1976. Prior to that only sub-section (1) thereof constituted Section 21. Obviously new sub- sections (2) and (3) are similar to the provisions of old Section 21 and they have been included to do away with the objections as regards pecuniary jurisdiction if not raised at the earliest opportunity. On a plain reading of sub-section (2) it is manifest that two conditions must be satisfied before an objection to the pecuniary limits of the jurisdiction of a court can be sustained and prove fatal. These are : (1) that the objection must have been taken in the court of the first instance at the earliest possible opportunity and in all cases where issues are settled at or before such settlement and (2) that there must have been a consequent failure of justice.

( 5 ) OBVIOUSLY Section 21 is an exception to the well established rule that where the court has no inherent jurisdiction over the subject-matter of the suit, its decree is a nullity even though the parties may have consented to the jurisdiction of the court. In Kiran Singh and others v. Chaman Paswan and others, AIR 1954 SC 340, while saying that "it is a fundamental principle that a decree passed by a Court without jurisdiction is a nullity, and that its invalidity could be set up whenever and wherever it is sought to be enforced or relied upon, even at the state of execution and even in collateral proceedings. A defect of jurisdiction, whether it is pecuniary or territorial or whether it is in respect of the subject-matter of the action, strikes at the very authority of the Court to pass any decree, and such a def