The main legal point established in the judgment is that the addition of a party should only be ordered if it is necessary for the court to effectively adjudicate and settle all the questions involved in the suit.

1. This and the other applications in the connected suits are on the name and on behalf of the Secretary of State for India in Council for the purpose of his being added as a party to the suit presumably as party defendant.

2. The main object of each of the suits is to obtain a declaration that the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act 1 of 1925 is invalid and ultra vires, and on the basis of such declaration the plaintiff has asked for a relief by way of injunction which is merely a relief consequent on the declaration.

3. The plaintiff in each of the cases is the head of a mutt or religious endowment and the only defendant to each of the actions is the Board of Commissioners for the Madras Religious Endowments, a body, it may be observed in passing, created and constituted by the said Act.

4. The question for determination therefore is whether on the application I should direct the Secretary of State being added as party defendant in these suits. The question is of considerable importance and of great difficulty though I did not realise the full extent of either till I was more than half way through the hearing. It has been argued with much learning and light and also some little warmth on both sides, and I took time to consider my judgment not only having regard to the importance of the question to the parties but also to the general principle on which alone it seemed to me that a satisfactory solution can be arrived at. If it had been an ordinary case, I should probably have had very little difficulty in persuading the parties to agree to the addition of the party on conditions which may be regarded as equitable in the circumstances.

5. It was with this view that almost at the very commencement of the discussion I asked the learned Advocate-General who appeared for the applicant whether he had any instructions to agree as to any conditions as to costs. He said he had none. Some days thereafter he again appeared before me and intimated that so far as the applicant was concerned, he had definite instructions not to consent to any conditions. He, however, at the same time intimated that he had received a communication from the President of the Board of Commissioners to the effect that if in the action the plaintiff should fail, the Board of Commissioners would consent to only one set of costs being allowed to the defendants and that they would be willing to allow the Secretary of State to take such one set. It is obvious that the two things are not and cannot be the same and that in these cases a set of costs to the Board of Commissioners must mean something very different to a set of costs to the Secretary of State, at any rate as at present represented in the action. Further I felt that such orders should, if at all, be passed only by consent of all parties. The plaintiff, however, refused to agree to any such arrangement and has asked me to decide the question raised, and having regard to the great importance of the matter and the likelihood of its being taken up elsewhere, sooner or later, I have deemed it fit to deal with the application directly and dispose of it on its merits.

6. The first observation that falls to be made with regard to the present application is that it is one for joinder of a third party as party defendant and made by the third party himself and not by the plaintiff or the defendant in the action. I have felt it necessary to state this because it seems to me that different considerations should apply to applications for joinder of additional parties when the party sought to be added is party plaintiff or party defendant and also when the application for such joinder is made by the party sought to be added or by either of the parties already on the record and if so, which of them. 1 will not pause to refer to all such considerations. In such a case as the present one however it is obvious that if a third partys application to be added as party defendant were opposed by both parties, I should have