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TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1983 (10) TMI 289
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....ter on the l7th of August, 1972. the appellant-wife withdrew from the society of the respondent-husband without any reasonable cause and despite repeated requests and entreaties of the respondent-husband arid the members of his family she declined to return and live with him. Ultimately, a panchayat along with the family members of the respondent-husband had approached and requested for the return of the appellant-wife to the matrimonial home but she flatly refused to return and stay with him at Bhatinda. The respondent-husband was then compelled to resort to the service of a registered legal notice to the wife in February 1974. reiterating his request to come and reside with him. Pursuant thereto the appellant-wife made a show of returning to the husbands house at Bhatinda for a few days and then again went away to her Parents house an the l6th of May. 1974. Persistent. attempts thereafter to persuade the appellant-wife to return to the matrimonial home having failed the petition for restitution of conjugal rights was hence presented on the 27th of July. 1974. 3. In contesting the petition. the appellant-wife admitted the marriage but pleaded that she was serving as a teacher in ....
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....e rested on the equality clause of Art. 14 of the Constitution was not raised before the Full Bench and consequently not considered by it. On this premise he declined to follow the same and opined that the Full Bench decision in Smt. Kailash Wati's case (supra) needs reconsideration by a still larger Bench and the reference was made accordingly. 6. Before us it was indeed the common and admitted position of the parties that on the facts of the present case the ratio of the Full Bench in Smt Kailash Watis case (1977-79 Pun LR 216) (supra) directly and squarely covers the legal issues involved. Now once it is so held as it inevitable must be, then a fortiori its ratio was binding on the learned single Judge. What is the precise import of this binding nature, seems now to need no exhaustive dissertation More than two centuries ago Blackstone in his celebrated Commentaries elaborated the rule of the binding nature of the precedent in the following terms :-- "It is an established rule to abide by former precedents when the same points come again into litigation as well to keep the scale of justice even and steady and not likely to waver with every Judges new opinion, as also....
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....der:-- "I am unable to adduce any reason in show that the decision which I am about to pronounce is right. On the contrary, if I were free to follow my own opinion, my own powers of reasoning such as they are, I should say that it is wrong. gut I am bound by authority--which, of course it is my duty to follow-- and following authority. I feel bound to pronounce the judgment which I am about to deliver." Similarly Lord Cozens-Hardy. M. R. in Velazquez Ltd. v. Inland Revenue Commrs. (1914) 3 KB. 458 had occasion to observe as follows :-- "But there is one rule by which of course, we are bound to abide that when there has been a decision of this Court upon a question of principle it is not right for this court, whatever its own views may be to depart from that decision. There would otherwise be no finality in the law. If it is contended that the decision is wrong then the proper course is to go to the ultimate tribunal the House of Lords who have power to settle the law and hold that the decision which is binding upon as is not good law." 8. As in England so in India, the legal position is identical and indeed Article 141 gives a constitutional status to the ....
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....s should not themselves pronounce decisions of other Division Benches to be wrong. such consideration should stand even more firmly in the way of Division Benches disagreeing with a previous decision of the Full Bench of the same Court." 11· Now apart from Full benches and the precedents of the superior Court, it would appear that even judgments of the Benches of the same High Court in a limited way are binding in the sense that a judgment cannot be rendered contrary to the earlier decision of a co-equal Bench. At the highest an equivalent bench can seek reconsideration of the same by a larger bench. It is unnecessary to multiply the precedents on the point and reference may instructively be made to the following observations in Mahadeolal Kanodia v. The Administrator General of West Bengal, AIR 1960 SC 936 (Para 19):-- "..........Judicial decorum no less than legal propriety forms the basis of judicial procedure. If one thing is more necessary in law that any other thing, it is the quality of certainty. That quality would totally disappear if judges of co-ordinate jurisdiction in a High Court start overruling one another's decisions. If one Division Bench o....
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....number or the order of the Judges who may be called upon to consider the matter must. therefore be left entirely open. 14· However, it is equally apt to elaborate what cannot be a valid ground for questioning or reconsidering the law settled by a larger Bench. The very use of the word 'binding' would indicate that it would hold the field despite the fact that the Bench obliged to follow the same may not itself be in agreement at all with the view. It is a necessary discipline of the law that the judgments of the superior Courts and of larger Benches have to be followed unhesitatingly whatever doubts one may individually entertain about their correctness. The rationale for this is plain because to seek a universal intellectual inanimate is an ideal too Utopian to achieve. Consequently the logic and the rationale upon which the ratio of a larger bench is rested, are not matters open for reconsideration. Negatively put, therefore the challenge to the rationale and reasoning of larger Bench is not a valid ground for unsettling it and seeking a re-opening and re-examination of the same this putting the question in a flux afresh. 15. It remains to advert to the solitary ....