1. MUNAMMAD HALEEM, ACTG. C. J. This appeal, by special leave, arises from the judgment of the Peshawar High Court, Peshawar dated 7th of August, 1972 by which the plea of limitation in R. F. A.
2. No. 11 of 1968 was decided against the appellant.
3. Land, measuring 26 Kanals and 4 Marlas, situate in village Achar, Tehsil Peshawar, was acquired for the digging of a Gravity Flow Canal under the Warsak High Level Canals Scheme pursuant to Notification dated 8th of August, 1960, issued under section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act.
4. Thereafter further Notifications under sections 6 and 9 were issued on 13th of March, 1961, and 15th of July, 1961, and the award was announced on 29th of November, 1962, under which compensation at the rate of Rs. 525 per kanal was awarded to the respondents. This award was further amended in regard to some detail and the amended award was again announced on 13th of June, 1963.
5. The respondents, on gaining knowledge of the Award on 19th of August, 1964, filed an application under section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act before the Land Acquisition Collector on 12th of September, 1964, for referring the matter to the Court for decision in regard to the compensation awarded. They accepted the compensation under protest and disputed the rate of compensa-- petition which according to them, was on the low side. The Collector refused the prayer on the ground that it had become time-barred; but on appeal the Additional Commissioner, exercising powers under section 18-B of the Act as applicable to this province, allowed the prayer by order dated 21 of October, 1965, and directed the Land Acquisition Collector to the required reference, which was accordingly made to the designated Civil Court on 16th of December, 1965.st The appellant took objection that the reference was incompetent as it was barred, but the designated Civil Court held against the appellant by order dated 1st of November 1967. The rate of compensation was also enhanced from Rs. 625 to is. 2,200 per Kanal. The appellant went in appeal to the Peshawar High Court and a learned Single Judge of that Court referred the following question to a larger Bench by order dated 7 of February, 1972 "Whether a reference can be thrown out by the Court on the ground that the application was not made to the Collector within six months particularly when an objection in this regard was already raised and decided in favour of the objector under section 18-B."
6. The Full Bench answered the question holding :- ". . That once the Collector has made reference to the Court, the Court would be incompetent to go behind the reference to see if the objection application before him (the Collector) had been filed within time, as prescribed in proviso to section 18 of the Act."
7. Leave to appeal was granted to examine this question as there was no authoritative pronouncement of this Court in the context of conflicting judicial opinions on this point.
8. The question posed for consideration relates to the scope and extent of jurisdiction exercised by the Court mentioned in section 18 of the Land Acquisition Act. Sections 18 and 30 of the Land Acquisition Act authorise the Collector to make references to the Court for the determination of those matters referred to therein. Such matters are enumerated in those sections. For reference sake it will be convenient to reproduce those sections:- "18.-(1) Any person interested who has not accepted the award may by written application to the Collector, require that the matter be referred by the Collector for the determination of the Court, whether his objection be to the measurement of the land, the amount of compensation, the persons to whom it is payable, or the apportion--ment of the compensation among the persons interested.
(2) The application shall state the grounds on which objection to the award is taken
30. When the amount of compensation has been settled under section 11, if any dispute arises as to the apportionment of the same or any part thereof, or as to the persons to whom the same Collector may refer such dispute to the decision of the Court."
9. This is not all. There are other sections which follow section 18, that is, sections 19, 20 and 21 which determine the scope and extent of jurisdiction exercised by such Court. Section 19 relates to the information to be furnished to the Court which also includes, amongst it the objection of the persons interested. Section 20 regulates the procedure for the deter--mination of the objection and section 21 confines the scops and inquiry of proceedings only to the consideration of the interest of the persons affected by the objection. Similarly, section 30 restricts the scope of jurisdiction to the determination of the apportionment of the amount of compensation. These sections are a part of a special Act which provides for the acquisition of land for a public purpose and the determination of the compensation payable to the persons affected by such acquisition.
10. Therefore, the extent and scope provided therein must constitute the jurisdiction of the designated Court which hears the reference. Such is the connotation of the word "jurisdiction". As held by this Court in State v. Zia-ur-Rahman (PLD1973SC49 "It may well be asked at this stage as to what is meant by `jurisdiction'? How does it differ from `judicial power'? Apart from setting up the organs the Constitution may well provide for a great many other things, such as the subjects in respect of which that power may be exercised and the manner of the exercise of that power. This it may provide that the Courts set up will exercise revisional or appellate powers or only act as a Court of a cessation or only decide consti--tutional issues. It may demarcate the territories in which a particular Court shall function and over which its writs shall run. It may specify the persons in respect of whom the judicial power to hear andth determine will be exercisable. These are all matters which are commonly comprised in what is called the jurisdiction of the Court.
11. It expresses the concept of the particular res or subject-matter over which the judicial power is to be exercised and the manner of its exercise. Jurisdiction is, therefore, a right to adjudicate concerning a particular subject-matter in a given case, as also the authority to exercise in a particular manner the judicial power vested in the Court.
12. It is, accordingly, in aid of this jurisdiction that the judicial power. Which resides in it, is exercisable for resolving the matters in controversy. Clearly, therefore, the extent of this jurisdiction is not the same as one conferred on a Court of general jurisdiction while hearing a suit under section 9, C. P.
13. C. It is only when a reference is made under section 18 A that the designated Court is empowered to act and not otherwise; and while exercising its jurisdiction, it cannot go behind the reference and hold that it was illegally made for the reason that the Collector had no power to do so as the application for making the reference was made beyond time. Such exercise of judicial power must be eminent from the jurisdiction otherwise it cannot be exercised. In this connection I would refer to the observations of Lord Esher M. R. In Drew and another v. Willis ((1891) 1 Q B 4507 "No Court has such power of setting aside an order which has been properly made, unless it is given by Statute . . . . Then it suggested that there is inherent power in the Court, either at common law or under its equitable jurisdiction. Certainly there is no such power at common law, and that there is none in a Court of Equity was shown by the fact that when asked to formulate an application to a Court of Equity, the learned counsel omitted, and rightly omitted, from his prayer any request that the charging order should be set aside."
14. Again, Prinsep, J., in Lala Preyag Lal and others v. Jai Narayan Singh and another (1 L R 22 Cal.
15. 419has expressed the same view as under:-- "I cannot admit that such a power is inherent in every Judicial or Revenue Officer. It is a power expressly given by law to Judicial Officers under certain conditions, and therefore, it cannot be assumed that when not so given it is inherent in every officer. If this had been so, there need not have been any legislation on the subject. We cannot hold that all this legislation was unnecessary."
16. These observations were approved in a later case (1 L R 34 Cal. 677) of the same High Court.
17. Having enunciated the proposition, we would now examine the Full Bench judgment of the Peshawar High Court in appeal. After examining the case-law cited for and against the proposition, the Full Bench held:- "The plain langauge of these sections reveal that it is the reference of the Collector which invests the Court with the necessary jurisdiction to enquire into the objections mentioned in section 19 of the Act and not the objection application filed by an interested person before the Collector. The fact that this is how these sections have been construed in some of the second set of judgments should be enough to doubt the correctness of the judgments favouring the affirmative proposition, for therein these sections were completely ignored. But if there be still any doubt on this point, then reference may be made, with advantage, to a judgment of the Indian Supreme Court Kothamau Kanakarthamma and others v. State of Andhra Pradesh (AIR 1965 SC 304), by which this irksome controversy seems to have been finally laid down at rest." and as to the proviso to section 18, fixing the time within which the application had to be made for making the reference, the Full Bench held that it was directory as no penalty was prescribed for its violation and gave the following reasons for holding so:- " . Now by looking at the scheme of the Act, it cannot be disputed that it is exproprietary in character, for the Collector can acquire the land of any one without his consent and all that the interested person would be entitled to is to claim compensation, The fact that in Ezra v. Secretary of State (32 I A 93) the Privy Council had the occasion to observe that the functions of the Collector, at least until he delivers his award, are administrative in character would be sufficient to hold that the proviso to section 18 of the Act was intended by the Legislature to be directory so that an interested person would have at least one opportunity to seek the determination of the amount of compensation from the Court, presided by a Judicial Officer, albeit the confines of its jurisdiction are delimited by section 21 of the Act, to only those matters falling under section 19 of the Act.
18. Furthermore the Act provides no penalty in case of an objection application is filed before the Collector beyond time, with a view to seeking a reference to the Court under section 18 of the Act, and this omission in our view is not without significance, or unlike section 3 of the Limitation Act, 1908, which enjoins the Courts to dismiss "every suit instituted, appeal preferred and application made after the period of limitation prescribed therefor by the First Schedule . . . Although limitation has not been set up as a defence, "the Act visualises to such consequence. And therefore the presumption would be that the proviso to section 18 of the Act was intended to be directory, designed only to achieve the prompt and orderly disposal of the land acquisition cases, and not mandatory so as to persuade us to hold that the disregard of its provisions should leave the interested persons without any remedy, particularly when the award has been given finality by the Act, and without being able to seek a reference to the Court the interested persons would stand deprived of any remedy whatever."
19. We agree with the formulation of this opinion as in the absence of any specific provision in the Act itself, the jurisdiction conferred by the relevant sections debarred the designated Court from examining the validity of the reference which is a condition precedent for the designated Court to act accordingly. As the executing Court cannot go behind the decree and so the designated Court cannot go behind the reference.
20. The question as to whether the application is or is not within time, is in the exclusive domain the Collector and the discretion exercised by him is not justiciable qua the exercise of judicial power by the designated Court having regard, in particular, to the language of section 21 of the Act. It was, however, revisable under section 18-B of the Act, as applicable to this Province, and the final order thus passed could not, by any stretch of imagination, be the subject-matter of review by the designated Court.
21. Abdul Sattar and another v. Mst. Hamida Bibi (PLD 1950 Lab. 370the Full Bench, while repelling the contention that once a reference was made to the Court it had no jurisdiction to question the validity of the reference held that if the learned Judge in Venkateswarswami v. Sub-Collector, Bezwada (AIR 1943 Mad. 327) "intended to lay down the unqualified rule that once the Collector has made a reference, the Court to which the reference is made, has no jurisdiction to enquire into the competency of that reference, I should be extremely reluctant to accept that statement of the law." This is based on the principle that where jurisdiction is conferred upon specified terms complied with in order to create and raise the jurisdiction for if they be not complied with, the jurisdiction does not arise. Judged from this angle, it seems to us that the specified terms upon which the jurisdiction by the designated Court can be exercised, are contained in sections 19, 20 and 21 which provided the limits of the exercise of that jurisdiction. Therefore, what is needed is the compliance of those provisions and not that which is not expressly provided therein. It is upon this non-consideration of those sections that the Full Bench of the Peshawar High Court did not accept this view, and we agree with it.
22. Bashir Ahmad and others v. The Collector, Multan (PLD 1962 Lab. 292it was held that the plain language of sections 20 and 21. Of the Act, when read together, restrict the scope of inquiry to a consideration of the objections raised by the interested parties in accordance with subsection (1) of section 18 of the Act. However, this section does not contemplate the decision on the question of limitation 1 because that is a matter for the Collector to decide. The Full Bench case of the same High Court was not cited before it, but the Division Bench relied on the other cases such as Khetesidas Gangaram v. First Land Acquisition Collector (AIR 1945 Cal. 508), Mahadeo Krishna Parkar v. Mamlatadar of Alfbag (AIR 1944 Bom. 200), A. K. Subramania Chettiar v. Collector of Coimbatore (AIR 1946 Mad. 184), S. Attar Singh R. S. Sardar Hira Singh v. Secretary of State (AIR 1940 Pesh. 35and Fazal Karim and others v. The Secretary of State for India (AIR 1934 Lab. 589(2)).
23. This opinion of the Division Bench is in accordance with the language of the statute and we approve it. We may here point out a case of the High Court of Baluchistan reported as K. A. Marker, Director A. D. Marker & Sons v. WAPDA, through its Chairman, Lahore (PLD 1979 Quetta 20) in which a contrary view was taken but this decision also seems to have ignored the consideration of sections 19, 20 and 21 which are pivotal in the determination of this issue. We would, accordingly, disapprove it. s. A. H.. Appeal dismissed.