1. Through the medium of this revision petition an order passed by Munsiff, Jammu on 4.11.1993 has been called in question. The impugned order disposes of an application filed by the plaintiff-petitioner on 14.9.93. The application made a prayer for direction to the defendant-respondents to produce their witnesses at their own because while furnishing a list of witnesses on 18.12.1991 defendants had given a long list of 59 witnesses were required to be examined. The order under revision has dismissed that application and held that while furnishing the list due compliance of Order 16 Rule 1 C.P.C. has been made. Aggrieved by the said order the petitioner has come up in revision before this Court.

2. The suit is for eviction of a shop situate at Pacca Danga Jammu on the ground of personal necessity. I have gone through the long list of witnesses referred to above. By way of preamble defendant-respondent in para 2 of the application/ list submits that he wants to produce these witnesses for purposes of proving the fact that the plaintiff is not the owner/ landlord. On the other hand it is father of the plaintiff who is the owner/landlord of the shop in question. It is also asserted in the preamble that the proposed witnesses would establish the fact that the requirement of the defendant was more pressing than that of the plaintiff. The third limb of the submission made in the preamble is that by producing these witnesses bonafide requirement of the defendant shall be established.

3. At a prima facie glance, the factum of bonafide requirement can be well determined while balancing the comparative requirement of the parties. So in short, on the own showing of the defendant, only two questions are to be answered and facts arising thereof to be proved:-

i) Who is the owner/landlord, the plaintiff or his father? ii)Whether the requirement of the plaintiff is bonafide and whose requirement out of he parties outways that of the other?

Mr. J.P. Singh appearing for the petitioner has submitted that for proving these two facts number of witnesses to be produced cannot be 59. So many of witnesses listed therein belong to Srinagar. Against every witness no specific purpose for which these witnesses are required to be summoned has been detailed out. Mr. Singh has drawn my attention to sub-rule 2 of rule 1 of Order 16. Said rule reads as under:-

"A party desirous of obtaining any summons for the attendance of any person shall file, in the court an application, stating therein the purpose for which the witness is proposed to be summoned."

4. I have heard the case on 25.3.1994 in part. Mr. L.K. Sharma has chosen not to appear before me despite the fact that the case was listed in the regular cause list. This leaves me with no alternative but to decide the revision petition ex-parte.

5. I have gone through the order impugned and also the record, in particular the list of witnesses.

6. Order 16 Rule 1 does not lay out the number of witnesses that a party in a suit can produce. That makes it clear that the legislature left this field to the courts of law who are seized of the matter in which witnesses are proposed to be examined. A question arises as to whether the legislature can mean, and the courts can allow as many witnesses to be called by the court as a litigant chooses to. In my opinion if the answer is yes then courts will be put at the mercy of litigants and the chain of litigation will never end. If the answer is yes, then in a case like this, even if the defendant-respondent would like to summon numberless witnesses, nobody can stop him. That means a civil suit cannot normally be decided during the life time of the suiter. That never can be the policy of law. The first duty cast upon the court™s is to control the proceedings. We with the advancement of our country and the growing complexities in our socio-economic pattern, have to address ourselves to the requirement of the time. Our law has to be real and meaningful. Courts have not only

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