Rule 7 of Chapter 1-A of Volume V of the Rules and Orders of the Punjab High Court, which requires the filing of a certified copy of the order or judgment along with the revision petition, is directory in nature and not mandatory.

M.R.SHARMA, J.

1. The revision petition filed in this Court was not accompanied by a certified copy of the order passed by the trial Court. The petition was admitted to hearing on an assurance given on behalf of the petitioner that he would file certified copy of the order passed by the learned Court below as soon as the same was made available.

2. When the case came up before me sitting in Chambers, a preliminary objection was raised on the strength of a Single Bench decision of this Court in Behari Lal V/s. Smt. Kaushalya Devi, 1971 0 PunLJ 868, that such a petition was not competent in the absence of a certified copy of the order passed by the trial court and there was no provision of law which entitled the revisional Court to pass an order dispensing with the production of the copy of such an order with the revision petition. I thought the view taken in Behari Lal s case (supra) was too stringent and needed some modification. At my request the learned Chief Justice ordered that this case should be decided by a Division Bench.

3. Rule 7 appearing in Chapter 1-A of Volume V of the Rules and Orders of the Punjab High Court, reads as under:-

"7. Every such petition shall be stamped as required by law and shall be accompanied by a copy of the decree or order in respect of which such application is made and by a copy of the judgment upon which such decree is founded. In the case of petitions for revision of the decree or order of an appellate court, a copy of the judgment or order of the court of first instance shall also be filed."

4. The use of the word shall does on a cursory perusal of the rule, show that a petitioner who approaches this Court for exercise of revisional jurisdiction is under a duty to file a certified copy of the decree or order, or judgment passed by the lower court along with the petition for revision. But from the phraseology of the rule alone it cannot be held that this rule is of mandatory character. In State of Uttar Pradesh V/s. Babu Ram Upadhya, AIR 1961 SC 751, the Court observed as under:-

"The relevant rules of interpretation may be briefly stated thus: When a statute uses the word shall, prima facie, it is mandatory, but the Court may ascertain the real intention of the Legislature by carefully attending to the whole scope of the statute. For ascertaining the real intention of the Legislature, the Court may consider, inter alia, the nature and the design of the statute, and the consequences which would follow from construing it the one way or the other, the impact of other provisions whereby the necessity of complying with the provisions in question is avoided, the circumstances, namely, that the statute provides for a contingency of the non-compliance with the provisions is or is not visited by some penalty, the serious or trivial consequences that flow therefrom and, above all, whether the object of the Legislature will be defeated or furthered."

5. The power of revision is conferred on this Court u/s. 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which empowers it to call for the record of any case decided by any Court subordinate to it in which no appeal lies and if the sub-ordinate Court has exercised jurisdiction not vested in it by law or has failed to exercise jurisdiction so vested in it, or has acted in exercise of its jurisdiction illegally or with material irregularity, this Court can rectify the error and pass such an order as it thinks fit. This power may be exercised by the High Court either suo motu or on a petition presented to it in this behalf. When the High Court exercises suo motu powers, the certified copy of the order or judgment passed by a sub-ordinate Court need not be before it. The High Court can also exercise this jurisdiction ex debito justitiae on the basis of information conveyed to it by anybody other than the aggrieved party. The object is to give relief in case of manifest injustice unhampered by the technical formalities of procedure. In other words, the very nat