Transfer of cases to be filed before District Courts

In the petition, Reshma Begam of Tiruchirappalli and her two minor children, claimed that while her husband Syed Jakir Hussain was entitled to his ancestral property of his grandfather. But two of his uncles have illegally executed a settlement with his grandmother in respect of the entire property which includes a house in which the petitioners were living. The uncles have managed to get an expartee decree from Tiruchirappalli Additional District Munsif Court-I for evicting the petitioners from the house and another suit filed by the duo against Reshma and her family for holding the property was also pending before the same court. Reshma has filed two suits including one against the expartee order and other seeking partition of the property before Tiruchirappalli Additional District Munsif Court III. So the HC should direct to transfer the suit pending before the Munsif Court I to the Munsif Court III, the petitioner sought. The Court, on Thursday, stated that though section 24 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) prescribes that such petitions could be preferred either before the district court or the HC the petitions should be filed only if the transfer of the cases was sought between the two lower courts coming within the jurisdiction of two different district courts.

The Tamil Nadu Omnibus Owners Association (TNOOA) admitted, before the Madurai Bench that they had collected individual fares which was illegal. The Suo Motu Public Interest Litigation (PIL) taken against fleecing by the operators was heard on Friday. The government pleader informed that the government authorities came to know about the issue only after the court highlighted the illegality. When the court sought  clarification  to know whether a meeting between the omnibus operators and the authorities in order to fix the individual fares was conducted, the PP replied in the negative. But senior counsel appearing for the operators admitted that the meeting was held. The PP then submitted the Compliance Report for the interim order given by the court for fixing the fares for the recent  Deepavali season (October 2731). According to the report, the transport authorities have collected about Rs.45 lakh from the operators who collected excess fares and who failed to pay taxes. Apart from detaining about 25 omni buses, the authorities have refunded Rs.28, 450 to 1133 passengers, from whom the excess fee were collected by 91 bus operators. The TNOOA counsel claimed that being contract carriage operators, they were illegally charging individual bus fare instead of contract fee. Refusing to buy the association’s counsel argument that the bus operators could appoint agents and allow them to collect the individual Court underlined that the operators could have only canvassers and not agents.