The duty of the court to ensure justice, prevent abuse of the legal process, and impose realistic costs to discourage dishonest litigation and abuse of process.

Tarlok Singh Chauhan, Judge (Oral)

This petition under Section 28 of the Himachal Pradesh Rent Control Act, 1987 (for short the ‘Act’) at the behest of the tenants seeks quashing of order passed by the learned Appellate Authority whereby their application for transfer of the case has been rejected.

2. In the application filed for transfer of case before the learned Appellate Authority, it has contended that the petitioners wanted to engage the services of some lawyers at Rohru, but none was ready to take up the case for the reason that the respondent was local person and had great influence in the locality, as he had retired as a District & Sessions Judge. Not only this, before joining the H.P. Judicial Service he had been practicing Advocate at Rohru and therefore, this was the additional ground that none of the lawyers were ready to accept their brief.

3. The respondent No.1 filed reply wherein it was contended that the allegations made in the application were vague and indefinite to the extreme, besides being incorrect. The petitioners had failed to disclose the names of the lawyers who were allegedly approached by them and who allegedly refused to take up their brief. It is further contended that on 19.3.2014 when the Rent Controller required the petitioners to disclose the name of the lawyers who had refused to accept their brief, the petitioners on 3.4.2014 were able to disclose the name of only one lawyer. Whereas, there were more than 40 lawyers practicing at the Rohru Bar. The allegations regarding influence in the locality or at Rohru was denied and it was contended that the respondent had commenced his practice at Rohru only for a short stint in the year 1973 and thereafter had immediately joined service but was now a senior citizen aged about 65 years leading a retired life.

4. The learned Appellate Court dismissed the application by holding that the allegations contained therein were vague, general in nature and it was fairly settled that the proceedings in the civil cases could not be transferred on the mere asking of a party. It was further held that since the respondent had retired as a District & Sessions Judge long back, it did not mean that none of the lawyers would be ready to accept his brief.

5. It is this order passed by the learned District & Sessions Judge which has been challenged by the petitioners.

6. I have heard learned counsel for the parties and have gone through the records of the case.

7. The basic principle governing the grant of petition for transfer which are required to be borne in mind are that these petition are not to be dealt with in a light hearted manner and transfer of the case from one court to another should not be granted readily for any fancied notion and unless a sufficiently cogent ground is disclosed, transfer should not be allowed as a mater of course. Exercising powers for transfer is discretionary and therefore, have to be exercised with extreme care, caution and circumspection. The petitioner cannot be stopped from going on with his petition in a chosen forum where he has a right of action against the respondent. As a general rule, the courts will not interfere unless the expenses and the difficulty of the trial would be so great as to lead to injustice or the petition has been filed in a particular court only for the purpose of causing injustice.

8. The nature and scope as also the discretion of the court to order transfer civil cases was the subject matter of decision by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Jitendra Singh Vs. Bhanu Kumari and others, (2009) 1 Supreme Court Cases 130 wherein it was held:-

“The purpose of Section 24 CPC is merely to confer on the court a discretionary power. A court acting under Section 24 CPC may or may not in its judicial discretion transfer a particular case. Section 24 does not prescribe any ground for ordering the transfer of a case. In certain cases it may be ordered suo motu and it may be done for administrative reasons. But when