The judgment or final order contemplated by Art.133(1) is the one that finally disposes of the dispute between the parties so far as the High Court is concerned, and the civil proceeding contemplated by the Article is a proceeding in which some rights to property or other civil rights are involved.

1. These are applications for certificates under Art.133 of the Constitution for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. CMP. No. 3314 of 1958 is in O.P. No. 8 of 1968, which was to quash the award of an Industrial Tribunal under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and the writ was dismissed by this court. C.M.P. No. 5767 of 1960 is in O.P. No. 97 of 1958, which was for the issue of a writ of certiorari to quash certain notices issued by the Regional Provident Fund Commissioner, Trivandrum requiring the petitioners to make contributions to the Employees' Provident Fund. The said O.P. was also dismissed by a Full Bench of this Court. The last of the petitions, namely, CMP. No. 5919 of 1960, is for a certificate for leave to appeal against the judgment in A.S. No.111 of 1959, the appeal itself being against O.P. No. 489 of 1957, which was to quash a portion of the award of an Industrial Tribunal. In this last case a learned judge of this Court dismissed the writ petition but in appeal a Division Bench reversed the order of the single judge and allowed the appeal thereby quashing the award of the Tribunal. The petition is for leave to appeal against that judgment in appeal.

2. In all these three cases it is not disputed that the amount or value of the subject-matter of the dispute was and is still not less than Rs. 20,000/-. In the first two cases the objection is raised to granting the certificates on the ground that the judgments or orders sought to be appealed against are not judgments or final orders in civil proceedings of the High Court. In the last case, besides the above objection, another objection is also raised, namely that Art.133(1)(a) cannot apply to the case as the court of first instance contemplated therein is a court subordinate to the High Court and not a Bench constituted by a single judge of the High Court itself. Now we would examine these conditions.

3. The first contention that is common to these cases is that the orders dismissing the writ petitions under Art.226 of the Constitution are not judgments or final orders in civil proceedings. The first question arising for consideration in this context is whether the orders of dismissal are judgments or final orders. The next question is whether the proceedings in these cases under Art.226 of the Constitution are civil proceedings.

4. The Constitution contemplates three categories of proceedings for purposes of appeal to the Supreme Court, namely, civil, criminal or other proceedings. This is evident from Art.132 of the Constitution. In this connection the learned counsel of the respondents invite our attention to a Full Bench decision of the Patna High Court in Collector of Monghyr v. Maharaja Pratap Singh Bahadur (AIR 1957 Pat. 102). Ramaswami,C.J. delivering the judgment of the Full Bench, observes that the jurisdiction of the High Court under Art.226 is an extraordinary jurisdiction vested in it not for the purpose of declaring the civil rights of the parties, but for the purpose of ensuring that the law of the land is implicitly obeyed and that the various tribunals and public authorities are kept within the limits of their jurisdictions. The learned Chief Justice further observes that the jurisdiction of the High Court under Art.226 is a supervisory jurisdiction and a proceeding under the said Article is not concerned with the determination of the civil rights of the parties. In Shriram Hanumanbux v. State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1955 Nag. 257), the same view, namely, that the extraordinary jurisdiction vested in the High Court under Art.226 is not meant to declare any rights but only to ensure that the law of the land was being properly administered and the refusal to issue the writ has only the effect of saying that the High Court does not see any irregularity in the administration of the relevant law, has been expressed. It has also been laid down in this case that such a decision is not covered either by the word "judgment" or the phrase "final o