Chang Min Tat J:

This is an appeal from the decision of the learned Senior Assistant Registrar overruling the objections of the third defendant to the form of accounts which were submitted by the receiver in pursuance of an order of court.

Incidentally. the Senior Assistant Registrar was rather critical of the somewhat inordinate delay that has taken place in a very long outstanding case. He did not allude to another objection that could be taken. The actual terms of the order for the accounts that was obtained from the court did not include any provisions for the time in which surcharges and falsifications should be taken. Parties are, with respect, unhindered as to, the time in which they could take to implement the order. The absence of such provisions could and in this case must be seen to make for delay.

But that is all very much by the way. I had strictly to decide in this appeal whether the Senior Assistant Registrar was right in his decision that the accounts had been properly lodged and the accounts were in the proper form so that the court might properly pass the accounts, in view of the objections that were taken. There were serious arguments before the Registrar and before me, but I think the decision is reasonably clear. Order 33 r. 4 of the Rules of the Supreme Court requires the accounts to be verified by affidavit, numbered consecutively and left and filed in the Registry. It is particularly specified in this rule that the accounts shall be referred to by the affidavit as an exhibit. It must not be annexed or referred to as annexed thereto, (see also O. 38 r. 23).

Order 55 r. 75 provides that the prescribed form shall be used for the respective purposes therein mentioned with such variations as circumstances may require. At this stage a comparison should be made with the corresponding rule in the Annual Practice. The Annual Practice refers to forms Nos 11-24 in App I. Now it is to be observed that the marginal note in the 1957 Rules of the Supreme Court reference was made to these very forms Nos 11-24 in App I. There can therefore be no doubt whatsoever that while our rule prescribes generally for the adoption of the forms prescribed, this prescription has a particular reference to the forms Nos. 11-24 of App I. A reference to the Annual Practice will indicate the particular forms for the compilation of the accounts.

On 15 December 1973 an affidavit was affirmed by the receiver that "I have this day filed a Statement of Accounts marked `A' now produced and shown to me which according to the best of my knowledge, information and belief sets out the receipts and payments of Wah Hup Engineering Works from 15 September 1969 to 17 November 1973." A comparison with FormNo. 11 of App I in pt 4 of the Annual Practice (1962 AP page 2442) will indicate how completely inadequate the affidavit of the receiver is. But I am prepared to accept that this affidavit did, however inadequately, verify the statement of accounts. But the accounts submitted were nothing more or less than a chronological order of the receipts and payments of the firm concerned. It is, in other words, a reproduction of a journal. The entries were unnumbered, but apparently it was conceded by all parties that this difficulty could be got over by numbering the items as they were gone through. The accounts were however nowhere near the forms set out in the rules (see 1962 AP pages 2446-2447). There is further no summary of the accounts as in the forms provided. Under the circumstances, I am completely at a loss to understand how they can be justified as being variations required, justified or permitted by the circumstances. No circumstances had been shown to justify the variations when the variations themselves were a complete departure from the rules.

There should, in my view, be some adherence to the rules of court, unless required by circumstances, if there is to be any meaning or purpose in such rules.

It should, I think, be realised by