P L D 1956 (W (PLP)

YAQUB ALI, J.‑This is a petition for a writ in the nature of certiorari to quash an order of Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah, Rehabilitation Commissioner, dated the 8th of February 1955. The relevant facts are these. Towards the end of 1947, shops Nos. 6‑S‑55/A and 55/B situated in Sargodha were allotted to Muhammad Tufail respondent. Later on, he inducted his nephew Abdul Ghafoor respondent into one of these shops and himself continued to occupy the other. This being considered a case of multiple allotment the District Rehabilitation Officer allotted one of these shops (No. 6‑S‑55/A) to Muhammad Ramzan petitioner on the 27th of October 1948. An appeal taken to the Deputy Rehabili tation Commissioner against this order was dismissed on the 31st of July 1949, on the ground that in reality Muhammad Tufail alone was in occupation of both the shops. The plea that Abdul Ghafoor was in separate occu pation of shop No. 6‑S‑55/B was found to be without any substance. The matter was then taken up in second appeal by Muhammad Tufail and Abdul Ghafoor to the Additional Rehabilitation Commissioner who set aside the order of allotment in favour of the petitioner and upheld the claim of Muhammad Tufail and Abdul Ghafoor to remain in separate possession of the two shops. Aggrieved by that order, the petitioner invoked the revisionary jurisdiction of the Additional Custodian for setting aside the order of the Additional Rehabilitation Commissioner on the ground that the latter had acted without jurisdiction in entertaining a second appeal, whereas only a revision petition was competent to the Rehabilitation Commissioner. The petition was allowed and Muhammad Tufail was directed to present the memorandum of appeal filed in the Court of the Additional Rehabilitation Commissioner on the revisional side. The matter was finally disposed of by Mr. S. S. Jafri, the then Rehabilitation Commissioner, by his order dated the 3rd of October 1953 whereby he affirmed .the allotment in favour of the present petitioner and directed that Abdul Ghafoor be served with a notice of ejectment from shop, No. 6‑S‑55/B and Muhammad Tufail be put into possession thereof. After Mr. Jafri was transferred and Sayyed Ijaz Hussain Shah took over charge as Rehabilitation Commissioner. Muhammad Tufail filed a review application (being review petition No. 107 of 1954) against the order of Mr. S. S. Jafri. It may be noticed that Abdul Ghafoor who could be the only aggrieved party, remained content with the order of Mr. S. S. Jafri and was impleaded as a res pondent in the review application. On the 8th of February 1955, Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah, on the ground that his predecessor had forgotten that Abdul Ghafoor was already in possession of shop No. 6‑S‑55/B and Muhammad Tufail of shop No. 6‑S‑55/A, and that Muhammad Ramzan, (the present petitioner) was to be accommodated and he saw no point in uprooting Abdul Gliafoor and Muhammad Tufail to settle Muhammad Ramzan, set aside the order of Mr. S. S. Jafri, thus canceling the allotment of shop No. 6‑S‑55/A in favour of the petitioner. In the course of his order, Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah observed that Muhammad Ramzan was twice offered allotment of some other shops but on one occasion his counsel and on the other Muhammad Ramzan himself declined to accept the allotment. A perusal of the order by Mr. S. S. Jafri would show that the first part of the reasoning of Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah, that his predecessor had forgotten that Abdul Ghafoor and Muhammad Tufail were in possession of two shops in question and that Muhammad Ramzan was to he settled in one of them, was factually incorrect, act, that Abdul Ghafoor was to be served with an ejectment notice and Muhammad Tufail, was to be put into possession of the shop occupied by Abdul Ghafoor and that Muhammad Ramzan was to be given possession of the shop to be vacated by Muhammad Tufail, makes it in rejecting the revision petition of Muhammad. Tufail Mrs S. S. Jafri was alive to all the relevant facts and nothing was omitted from consideration or "forgotten" in the words of Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah. The observation that Muhammad Ramzan was twice offered allotment of some other shops appears to have been based on an in formation extraneous to the record on which the decision of Mr. S. S. Jafri was based. On the 15th of February 1955, Muhammad Ramzan filed a petition in this Court under section 223‑A of the Government of India Act, for quashing the order of Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah on the ground that, in reviewing the order of Mr. S. S. Jafri, he had acted in excess of the jurisdiction conferred on a Rehabilitation Commissioner to review his own previous order under section 13 (5) of the Pakistan Rehabilitation Ordinance (XIX of 1948). The petition was admitted to a hearing, but dismissed on the 5th of April 1955, as a result of the decision of the Federal Court in Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan's case (P L D 1955 F C 240) which declared that, in the absence of the assent of the Governor‑General, section 223‑A had not become the law of the country. After the Constituent Assembly revalidated the provisions of section 223‑A, Muhammad Ramzan filed the present petition on the 3rd of February 1956, seeking the same relief as formed the subject matter of his earlier petition. Section 13 (5) reads as follows:‑ " The Rehabilitation Commissioner or Additional, Deputy or Assistant Rehabilitation Commissioner may, after giving notice to the parties concerned, review his own order, so far as justice may require, to correct errors or supply omissions which are apparent upon the face of the record." The words which determine the limits of the jurisdiction vested in the rehabilitation authorities mentioned in the sub section are: " to correct errors or supply omissions which are apparent upon the face of the record." Do these words mean any error or omission which may be revealed on rehearing the facts of the case? If so, the scope of a review application will be as large as that of an appeal. Such an interpretation must be rejected forthwith, because the scope of a review application cannot be at par with that of an appeal. Any error, in the appreciation of facts or exposition of law, furnishes grounds for interference on appeal and not in a review application. In this respect, we may refer to the provisions of rule 1 of Order XLVII of the Code of Civil Procedure which are to some extent in pari materia with the provisions of section 13 (5) of the Pakistan Rehabilitation Ordinance (XIX of 1948). Under the Code an order may be reviewed if the aggrieved person has discovered new and important matter or evidence which, after the exercise of due diligence, was not within his knowledge or could not be produced by him at the time when the decree was passed or order made, or on account of some mistake or error apparent on the face of the record or for any other sufficient reason. A comparison of these provisions with those of section 13 (5) reproduced above would show that the scope of a review application` under the Code of Civil Procedure is much wider than under the provisions of section 13 (5) with which we are con cerned in this case. The excusable discovery of new and important matter or evidence and any other sufficient reason cannot be the grounds of review under section 13 (5). The words "mistake or error" apparent on the face of the record being the same in both the provisions of law, it will be advantageous to refer to an authority of the Judicial Committee in Chajju Ram v. Neki and others (49 I A 144), in which it was held that a. Court hearing an application for the review of a decree on appeal has no jurisdiction to order a review because it is of opinion that a different conclusion of law should have been arrived at. It is obvious that if an error in the exposition of law could not be treated as an error apparent on the face of the record, any error in the appreciation of the facts of a case would not be so. At page 150 of the report their Lordships of the Judicial Committee observed that if they were at liberty to construe the language of Order XLVII of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, without reference to its history and to the decisions upon it, their task, would not appear to be a difficult one. For it is obvious that the Code contemplates procedure by way of review by the Court which has already given judgment as being different from that by way of appeal to a Court of appeal. Their Lordships then referred to the decision of the Court of Appeal in Charles Bright Co. v.,Seller ( 1904 1 K B 6 ) in which the history of the procedure in England is discussed and the limits to review an order are explained. The claim for review in that case proceeded on the ground that the order was bad on the face of it, because it purported to charge cash in the hands of a third party and was, therefore, contrary to statutory enactment. The Judgments Act, 1838 (1 and 2 Vict. c. 110), as amended by the judgments Act, 1840 (3 and 4 Vict. c. 82), did not authorise the making of a charging order on cash in the hands of a third party. Cozens‑Hardy L. J. in delivering the judgment of the Court of Appeal, observed that it may be assumed for the present purpose that the charging order was not justified by the statutes, and that the error is apparent on the face of the order. But in view of the history of the procedure in England, the High Court had no jurisdiction to rehear a case, such jurisdiction being essentially appellate since the coming into force of the judicature Act. While explaining the limits of an appeal on review, the learned Lord relied upon the following passage from the judgment of Lord Bacon:‑ " No decree shall be reversed, altered, or explained, being once under the great seal, but upon bill of review; and no bill of review shall be admitted except it contains, either error in law appearing in the body of the decree, with out further examination of matter of fact, or some new matter which hath risen in time after the decree, and not any new proof which might have been used when the decree, was made nevertheless, upon new proof that is come to light after the decree made, and could not possibly have been used at the time when the decree passed, a bill of review may be grounded by the special licence of the Court, and not otherwise." . The words "without further examination of matters of fact" deserve special attention in the passage quoted above In the case decided by the judicial Committee referred to above, the application for review was allowed by a Division Bench of this Court on the ground that the previous decision of the case had " proceeded upon an incorrect exposition of the law." Dealing with these observations, their Lord ships of the Judicial Committee remarked that the second Division Bench thus newly constituted then proceeded to deal on the merits with the judgment brought before them under the Code for review, treating the view of the law taken by the previous Division as matter that was open to them as if on an appeal. A little later their Lordships again observed that the question with which they had to deal was one concerned not with appeal to a Court of Appeal, but with review by the Court, which had already disposed of the case. After reciting the three cases in which alone review is permitted under the Code, their Lordships held that the first two alternatives, i.e. new material overlooked by excusable misfortune, and mistake or error apparent on the face of the record, did not apply in that case. The above discussion would show that even under the wider scope of review provided by the Code of Civil Procedure Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah could not have reviewed the order of Mr. S. S. Jafri on the grounds mentioned in his order. But, as has been noticed above, the scope of review under section 13 (5) of the Pakistan Rehabilitation Ordinance (XIX of 1948) is much more restricted than the relevant provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure. In our view, the rehabilitation authorities have been given the limited power to correct an error of fact or law or to supply omissions which are apparent on the face of the order itself, i.e. without further examination of matters of fact. Such omissions and errors will be few and rare and always of minor significance, for instance, miss-descrip tion of facts or provisions of law on account of accidental A omission or error on the part of the authority concerned. If a matter has been considered and a decision given thereupon, no matter howsoever erroneous the decision may appear, the rehabilitation authorities have thereafter no jurisdiction to review that order, except on the ground indicated above. On this view of the provisions of section 13 (5) of Ordinance (XIX of 1948), the impugned order is clearly without jurisdiction and liable to be set aside in exercise of our writ jurisdiction. The rehabilitation authorities concerned are accordingly directed to put Muhammad Ramzan petitioner into possession of shop No. 6‑S‑55/A, situated in Sargodha, and to forbear from implementing the order of Mr. Ijaz Hussain Shah, dated the 8th of February 1955. We further direct the respondents to pay costs of these proceedings to the petitioner. A. H. Writ granted.