DESAI, C. J. : The petitioner filed a petition for certiorari for the quashing of an order passed by a Rent Control and Eviction Officer (Opposite Party No. 1) directing the order of an accommodation to let it to opposite party No. 2 who will be referred in as "the opposite party", a notice issued by the Rent Control and Eviction Officer under S. 7-A(1) of the (Temporary) Control of Rent and Eviction Act calling upon the petitioner to vacate the accommodation within a certain time and an order passed by him under S. 7-A(2) rejecting his reply to the notice and calling upon him to vacate within three days and threatening to use force to evict him in default.

2. The petition came up for hearing before our brother Jagdish Sahai who referred the following question to a Division Bench because the decision of V.D. Bhargava, J. in Syed Kasim Husain v. Rent Control mid Eviction Officer, Allahabad, 1960 All LJ 546, required reconsideration -

''Whether the remedy of a revision application before the Commissioner and another before the State Government is not an adequate alternative remedy which should be exhausted before a writ petition is entertained in this Court ?"

The petition was laid before a Division Bench consisting of two of us and it referred the case to a Full Bench for reconsideration of decisions of Division Bench with regard to the question. Hence the petition is laid before us. What we have to do is to answer the question; the petition has not been laid before us for decision.

3. Section 7-A(4) of the (Temporary) Control of Rent and Eviction Act reads us follows :-

"No appeal shall He from any order passed by the District Magistrate under this section, but the Commissioner may revise the said order, if he is satisfied that the District Magistrate has acted illegally or with material irregularity or has wrongly refused to act and may make such order as he thinks fit."

4. Section 7-F road as follows :-

"The State Government may call for the record of any case granting or refusing to grant permission for the filing of a suit for eviction referred to in S. 3 or requiring any accommodation to be let or not to be let to any person under S. 7 or directing a person to vacate any accommodation under S. 7-A and may make such order as appears to it necessary for the ends of Justice."

5. It is well settled that the jurisdiction conferred by Art. 226 of the Constitution is discretionary; what this means is that a High Court is not bound to issue a writ even though a case is made out for its issue and it can in its discretion refuse to issue it for certain reasons appealing to it. Neither can one party compel it to issue it nor can the other party compel it not to issue it. Its order issuing it is within law as also its order refusing to issue it. A question may arise whether it has exercised its discretion arbitrarily or, erroneously but no other question can arise from its order either issuing it or refusing to issue it.

6. It is equally well settled that the existence of an alternative adequate remedy is a ground for refusing to issue a writ. The jurisdiction conferred by Art. 226 it an extraordinary jurisdiction which is expected to be exercised after the jurisdiction of ordinary Courts has been invoked and invoked unsuccessfully or the matter is beyond the jurisdiction of ordinary Courts. The Constitution by conferring upon a High Court the power of issuing a writ did not in end to take away the jurisdiction of ordinary Courts or to use it as a substitute for that jurisdiction. It did not intend to confer upon a person a choice of the ordinary Courts of the High Courts. What the law is that the High Court is justified in refusing a writ on the ground that an alternative adequate remedy was available to the petitioner and he has failed to avail himself of it, not that it is bound to do so. The very issue of a writ having its discretion there cannot be a hard and fast rule governing it because otherwise it would cease to be a matte