( 1 ) THE question referred for the opinion of the Full Bench is " is the Tribunal constituted under the Displaced Persons (Debts Adjustment) Act, 1951 (Act No. LXX of 1951) a Court subordinate to the High Court within the meaning of Section 115 Civil procedure Code? Does a revision under Section 115 Civil Procedure Code lie against an order passed by such a tribunal?"

( 2 ) I have had the benefit of reading the judgments proposed to be delivered by my brothers S. D. Khare and G. C. Mathur, JJ. , but I regret I am unable to agree with them. This question came up before me in an earlier case of Sunder Das v. Lach-man Das, AIR 1957 All 352. Having heard learned counsel on the present occasion and having given very careful consideration to the views expressed by my brothers in their proposed judgments, I still End no reason to change the view thai was taken by me earlier in the case cited above.

( 3 ) IN the course of arguments before us. it appears to have been assumed that, whenever a judicial function is being exercised by any person, that person can only be described as, and must belong to, one of the two classes, a Court or a per-sona designata. I do not consider that these are the only two classes by which such authorities must necessarily be covered. The word tribunal has been used in the Displaced Persons (Debts Adjustment) Act, 1951 (hereinafter referred to as the Act), with which I am concerned, and has also been used in other statutes and. I do not see why every tribunal must necessarily be covered by either the word court or the word persona designata. The Constitution itself, in Article 227, mentions Courts and tribunals and thus seems to distinguish between a Court and a tribunal without specifically envisaging that every tribunal must necessarily be a persona designata. In my opinion, therefore, it is not at all necessary in this case to go into the question whether a tribunal under the Act is a persona designata or not. The question that is to be seen is whether it is a Court within the meaning of Section 115 Civil procedure Code.

( 4 ) THE word court used in Section 115 Civil Procedure Code must necessarily, in my opinion, be held not to cover all different kinds of Courts functioning in the country. The Courts of sessions and the Courts of Magistrates exercising jurisdiction under the Criminal Procedure code are also Courts but no one can even suggest that any of them is a Court within the meaning of the word court as used in Section 115 Civil Procedure Code. This Code, in its Preamble, contains an indication oe the nature of Courts in respect of which the Legislature enacted the code. The Preamble refers to Courts of Civil Judicature. Then, in Section 3 Civil Procedure code, the hierarchy of Courts governed by the Code is mentioned. The question that is, therefore, to be seen is whether a tribunal under the Act functions as a Court of Civil Judicature and whether the provisions of Section 3 of the Code can be applied to such a tribunal in order to determine whether such a tribunal comes under the hierarchy of Courts.

( 5 ) WHEN the case is examined in this aspect, it appears to me that a tribunal under the Act cannot be held to be a Court of Civil Judicature capable of being classified in the hierarchy of Courts in accordance with Section 3 of the Code unless it be held that the Civil Courts designated as tribunals continue to function in their capacity as Civil Courts and do not function in a different capacity as tribunals. The Act, it seems to me, specifically distinguishes between the two capacities of such Courts which is quite clear from the provisions of the various sections of the act.

( 6 ) FIRST, there is the definition of the word tribunal contained in Section 2 (12) of the Act. The tribunal is defined as any Civil Court specified under Section 4 as having authority to exercise jurisdiction under this Act. This definition itself means that once a Civil Court is specified as having auth