' Muhammad Sharif and Company, Government Contractors of Gujranwala, had filed an application under section 8/20 of Arbitration Act against the Province of Punjab (Secretary, Communication and Works) and Executive Engineer, Highway Division, Gujranwala, laying claim to certain amount recoverable from the Department, on account of construction of a portion of road connecting Wazirabad with Daska, during the financial year 1973-74. As stipulated by clause 25-A of the agreement between the parties, the contractor had initially submitted his claim before the Superintending Engineer, Highways Circle, Lahore. The Court, on being approached by the contractor, appointed Mr. Nasir-ud-Din, Director, Aided Project, Lahore as the sole arbitrator. He announced the award, which was accepted by the contractor, but not by the Highways Department. It was in the amount of Rs,60,000, which, according to the arbitrator, the department was liable to pay to the contractor. The Government failed to establish its assertion that the arbitrator had misconducted himself or the proceedings, and Mr. Rustam Ali Malik, Civil Judge, Lahore allowed the application under the Arbitration Act and overruled the objections raised by the Government.
2. The Government came up in appeal, which was entrusted to Sh. Mazaffar Hussain, Additional District Judge, Lahore, who on 19-11-1978, returned the same to the appellant with a direction that the same be filed in the Court of competent jurisdiction, namely, the High Court, as the pecuniary jurisdiction of the District Judge, at the relevant time, was up to Rs,50,000 and the award was in the amount of Rs,60,000. The Secretary to the Government of Punjab, Communication and Works Department, Lahore, and the Executive Engineer, Highways Division, Gujranwala, preferred a revision petition in this Court, assailing the propriety/legality of the order dated 19-11-1978, passed by the learned Additional District Judge, Lahore. Standpoint of the petitioners was that they had not challenged the validity of the entire claim of the contractor but had taken exception to it to the extent of much smaller amount (less than Rs,25,000), and the Additional District Judge, was fully competent to hear and dispose of the appeal and the order passed by him to the effect that he did not have jurisdiction in the matter was bereft of legal soundness. A request was also made, at a subsequent stage, that the revision petition be converted into an appeal.
3. It has been urged before me that whether the amount in dispute was Rs,60,000 or it was only Rs,25,000 or less than that, the District Court has jurisdiction to deal with the matter, now that the pecuniary limits have been expanded to two lac rupees, and in neither case this Court is required to send back the appeal, to be heard by the District Judge or an Additional District Judge.
Jurisdictional limits of the Court concerned have however, to be kept in view as were prescribed in those days and not in accordance with the present position thereof. In the order passed on 9-5- 1992 by my learned brother Mr. Akhtar Hasan, J. (as he then was), the matter had actually been thrashed almost conclusively. Reference had been made to Abdul Ghani v. Ghulam Sarwar (PLD 1977 SC 102), Mian Aizad Bakhsh v. Sheikh Muhammad Afzal 1985 SCMR 1003 and Nek Muhammad v.
A.C. Jhelum and others 1986 SCMR 1493, in support of the proposition that time taken before a wrong forum by a party could not be condoned, nor could a mistaken advice of the counsel afford an extenuating circumstance. Instead of refilling the appeal in this Court, which then had pecuniary competence in the matter, the Government chose to assail the very order of return of memorandum of appeal made on 19-11-1978 by the learned Additional District Judge. It was not just a conceptional error by virtue of which the appeal had been labled as a revision petition, although it was intended to be instituted as an appeal. The very plea and prayer of the petitioners in coming to this Court had a different object, as by way of the revision petition, the petitioners had prayed for setting aside the order dated 19-11-1978, by impugning its validity and operativeness within that limited scope, and merits of the matter were not proposed to be examined and determined by this Court. It was prayed that the case be remanded by this Court to the Appellate Court below, for its decision afresh on merits. Obviously, even if this revision petition is now allowed to be taken as appeal, although with its present frame, it cannot be so treated; it will be deemed to have been filed now and not with effect from the juncture when it was preferred as a revision petition (on 13-3-1979). Being palpably time-barred, it will have to be thrown out.
4. It will be realised that the revision petition, with the plea and prayer in which it had originally been couched, had no merit, as the disputed portion of the amount in question would not have determined the pecuniary jurisdiction of the forum. The respondent firm had laid a claim to Rs,60,000 and that amount indeed would have been taken into account for the purpose of determining the pecuniary limits or competence of the forum. Case of Province of Punjab v. District Judge and others PLD 1984 Lah. 515 I the authority on the point. The impugned order returning the appeal and asking the appellants to file the appeal in the competent Court was unexceptionable and the petitioners were ill-advised to impugne the same by making a revision petition. I would dismiss the petition with costs.