§ Section 115, CPC 1908 (in substance)

(1) The High Court may call for the record of any case which has been decided by any Court subordinate to such High Court and in which no appeal lies thereto, and if such subordinate Court appears —

(a) to have exercised a jurisdiction not vested in it by law, or

(b) to have failed to exercise a jurisdiction so vested, or

(c) to have acted in the exercise of its jurisdiction illegally or with material irregularity,

the High Court may make such order in the case as it thinks fit:

Provided that the High Court shall not, under this section, vary or reverse any order made, or any order deciding an issue, in the course of a suit or other proceeding, except where the order, if it had been made in favour of the party applying for revision, would have finally disposed of the suit or other proceeding.

(2) The High Court shall not, under this section, vary or reverse any decree or order against which an appeal lies either to the High Court or to any Court subordinate thereto.

(3) A revision shall not operate as a stay of suit or other proceeding before the Court, except where such suit or other proceeding is stayed by the High Court.

§ Three threshold requirements

Before the grounds are reached:

• A case which has been decided. There must be an adjudication that determines some right or obligation of the parties. A purely procedural direction that decides nothing, such as an order fixing a date or directing a party to file a document, is not a case decided. The expression covers an interlocutory order that decides an issue, not every order made in a suit.

• By a court subordinate to the High Court. The jurisdiction is supervisory over subordinate civil courts; it does not extend to tribunals outside that hierarchy, for which Article 227 may be available.

• In which no appeal lies. Sub-section (2) is express: the High Court shall not vary or reverse any decree or order against which an appeal lies, whether to it or to a subordinate court. Revision is a residuary remedy, not an alternative to appeal.

(a) Jurisdiction not vested

The court exercised a power the law did not give it

A court entertains a suit expressly barred by a special statute, or grants a relief it has no authority to grant

(b) Failure to exercise jurisdiction

The court declined to decide something it was bound to decide

A court wrongly holds that it has no jurisdiction and returns the plaint, or refuses to entertain an application it is required to entertain

(c) Illegal or materially irregular exercise

The court had jurisdiction but exercised it in a manner the law forbids

Deciding without giving a party a hearing; ignoring a mandatory provision of procedure; acting on a view of the law that goes to the manner of exercise rather than the correctness of the result

§ The line that the whole section turns on

Clause (c) is not a general error-correcting power. The words are acted in the exercise of its jurisdiction illegally or with material irregularity. They address the manner in which the jurisdiction was exercised, not the correctness of the conclusion reached.

So a wrong decision is not revisable. A court with jurisdiction that misreads the evidence, or takes an erroneous view of the law, has decided wrongly; it has not exceeded its jurisdiction. The error may be grave, and the remedy may be an appeal where one lies, but it is not a ground of revision.

The classic formulation is that a court has jurisdiction to decide rightly and to decide wrongly, and an erroneous decision within jurisdiction is not corrected under Section 115.

What does fall within clause (c): a breach of natural justice, a refusal to consider material the law requires to be considered, a disregard of a mandatory procedural requirement, and an exercise of discretion on considerations the statute excludes.

§ What the proviso does

It forbids the High Court from varying or reversing any order made, or any order deciding an issue, in the course of a suit or other proceeding, except where that order, if it had been made in favour of the party applying, would have finally disposed of the suit or other proceeding.

The test is hypothetical and one-sided. The court asks: suppose the subordinate court had decided this application the other way, in the applicant's favour, would the suit have ended there and then? If yes, revision may lie. If no, it may not.

Worked example. An application under Order VII Rule 11 to reject the plaint is rejected. Had it been allowed, the suit would have ended. Revision therefore lies. But an application to amend a pleading is refused: had it been allowed, the suit would have continued. Revision does not lie.

Why it was introduced. Interlocutory revisions were the principal cause of delay in civil litigation: a suit could be stalled for years while each intermediate order travelled to the High Court. The 1999 amendment, brought into force in 2002, confined the remedy to orders whose correction would actually shorten the litigation.

Source

The Code

The Code

The Code

The Constitution

Who exercises it

The High Court

The court authorised to hear appeals

The same court that passed the decree

The High Court

Right or discretion

DISCRETIONARY: the High Court may make such order as it thinks fit

A RIGHT conferred by statute

A right to apply, on the stated grounds

Discretionary and supervisory

Ground

The three jurisdictional grounds, subject to the proviso

Error of fact or law within the scope of the appeal

New matter, error apparent, or other sufficient reason

To keep tribunals and courts within the bounds of their authority

Over whom

Courts subordinate to the High Court

The court below

Itself

All courts and TRIBUNALS within its territorial jurisdiction

When barred

Where an appeal lies: s. 115(2)

Where the statute gives no appeal

Rule 9: no second review

Not barred by the Code, but exercised sparingly and not as a substitute for appeal

Merits

Not reopened

Reopened

Not reopened

Not reopened

§ Revision and Article 227 in practice

They overlap but are not the same. Article 227 confers a power of superintendence over all courts and tribunals within the High Court's territorial jurisdiction; Section 115 confers a statutory revisional jurisdiction over subordinate courts only.

The 1999 proviso does not cut down Article 227, which is a constitutional power that the Code cannot narrow. In practice, petitions that would once have been revisions are now filed under Article 227.

But the constitutional power is exercised sparingly. It is not a substitute for an appeal, and it is not used to correct ordinary errors of fact or law. The grounds on which it is exercised, a jurisdictional excess, a flagrant disregard of law, or a grave failure of justice, resemble those under Section 115.