JUDGMENT

1. This is an appeal from an order by the District; Judge of Cawnpore, dated the 21st of February 1920, refusing; to file an award. The application on which the order was made was presented by one of the arbitrators at the request of the successful party in the arbitration, namely, the present appellant. An objection was made to the application by the present respondents on the ground that there had been no valid submission,

2. A preliminary objection was raised at the hearing of the appeal on the ground that no appeal lies. On the face of the order, it is clearly one within the expressed provision of Section 104(1)(f) of the Civil Procedure Code, being "an order refusing to file an award in an arbitration without the intervention of the Court." The District Judge decided that this section does not apply to the arbitration award, as this award purports to have been under the Arbitration Act (IX of 1899). There is nothing in that Act to support this view, and it is to be noted that the Civil-Procedure Code was re-enacted some years later than the Arbitration Act. In support of the preliminary objection an authority has been sited, Campbell & Co. v. Jeshrai Giridhari Lall 46 Ind. Cas. 687 : 45 C. 502, in which the Calcutta High Court held that Section 104 of the CPC did not apply. That case is distinguishable. The award had been filed by the Registrar of the High Court as a ministerial act in aooordanae with the rules of the Calcutta High Court. Subsequently, a Rule was applied for through a Judge of the High Court asking that the award should be set aside. This Rule was discharged but the award had been filed and there had been no order of the High Court refusing to file it, Section 20 of the Arbitration Act enables the various High Courts in India to frame rules as to the filing of awards and all proceedings consequential thereon or incidental thereto. Such Rules would, of accurse, when made, have the effect of a Statute, but it follows that the practice provided by the various High Courts in India for proceeding under the Arbitration Act may vary. The Allahabad High Court has made no rules. The natural result of this is, that parties themselves, and the lower Courts alike, follow the ordinary and familiar procedure usually adopted under the statutory rules of the Code, The practice is, to apply for an order to file the award and the Court adjudicates upon such application. This is the converse of the practice in Calcutta as appears from the judgment of the Chief Justice of that Court. But there is nothing in the Arbitration Act rendering such practice as has been followed in this case, and in any other case, in cancer, incompetent, and procedure of some kind is obviously necessary to enable the Court to exercise the power of remitting or setting aside an award under either Sections 13 or 15 of the Act. We think that the procedure adopted in thin case was legitimate and proper and probably the only proper procedure available. The Judge had, therefore, jurisdiction to make the order which he did and the order being one refusing to file the award it is appeasable u/s 104(1)(f).

3. In Calcutta it was held that an appeal lay under another provision of the law from the order (which in that case was an order of a High Court Judge) so that the point of practice became of no importance. It is clearly desirable on every ground that such an order, as the one now in question, should be open to review in the High Court and that this Court should, as far as possible, control the Courts below upon questions of principle and practice arising out of arbitration proceedings, keeping in mind the settled principle that decisions of law and of fact by arbitrators, if honestly and regularly reached, cannot been opened. The question now before us was left open by a Bench of this Court similarly constituted in the case of Sukhamal Bansidhaf v. Babn Lal Kedia Co. 59 Ind. Cas. 75 : 18 A.L.J. 652 : 2 U.P.L.R. 243 : 42 A. 525, and the passage from