Madhya Pradesh High Court: The Court had to decide on a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution, challenging the order passed by Family Court, Jabalpur in 2014 where the trial court dismissed the application preferred by the petitioner under Order 16 Rule 1 CPC that mandates the filing of list of witnesses before the Court.
The petitioner had filed the divorce petition against the respondent under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act and during its pendency, the petitioner had filed application under Order 16 Rule 1 CPC for summoning the witness of other party which was dismissed by the trial court. The Judge heard both the parties and the order passed by the trial court and observed that the trial court had rejected the application as the case was pending for recording the statement of witnesses for last two years.
The Court noticed that the trial court neither suffered from any jurisdictional infirmity nor any error apparent on the face of record warranting interference in exercise of Article 227 of the Constitution. It was further held referring to Jai Singh v. MCD, (2010) 9 SCC 385 and Shalini Shyam Shetty v. Rajendra Shankar Patil, (2010) 8 SCC 329 that Article 227 of the Constitution cannot be exercised to correct all errors of a judgment of court acting within its limitation and can be exercised where the orders are passed in grave dereliction of duty or in flagrant abuse of fundamental principles of law and justice. Accordingly, the Judge dismissed the petition for being devoid of any merit. [Rahul Jain v. Namrata Jain, 2017 SCC OnLine MP 327, decided on 20.02.2017]