Exhaustion of Remedies

The Supreme Court may refuse to entertain appeal under Art. 136 from the order of inferior
Tribunal where the litigant has not availed himself to the ordinary remedies available to him at
law, or has not appealed from the final order of the Appellate Tribunal on appeal from the
decision of the inferior Tribunal.

The court has imposed on itself a restriction that before invoking the jurisdiction of the court
under article 136, the aggrieved party must exhaust any remedy which maybe available under the
law before the lower appellate authority or the High Court.1

In case of Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. & Ors vs Vindhya Telelinks Ltd. & Ors2 the SC
while discussing whether the Sc juris can be invoked under Article 136 of the Constitution,

We may also usefully refer to the observations of this Court in Punjab Agro Industries
Corporation Ltd. v Kewal Singh Dhillon - 2008 (11) SCALE 616 where an order was passed by
the District Judge under section 11(6) of the Act (as designate of the Chief Justice) was sought to
be challenged before this court, by seeking special leave. This Court held :-

"This Court has repeatedly stressed that Article 136 is not intended to permit direct access to this
Court where other equally efficacious remedy is available and the question involved is not of any
public importance; and that this Court will not ordinarily exercise its jurisdiction
under Article 136, unless the appellant has exhausted all other remedies open to him.
Therefore, the contention that the order of the Civil Judge, Sr. Division rejecting a petition
under section 11 of the Act could only be challenged, by recourse to Articlr136 is untenable. The
decision in SBP did not affect the maintainability of the writ petition filed by appellant before the
High Court."

Further, in the case of, Punjab Agro Industries Corpn. Ltd vs Kewal Singh Dhillon3 This
Court has repeatedly stressed that Article 136 is not intended to permit direct access to this Court
where other equally efficacious remedy is available and the question involved is not of any
public importance; and that this Court will not ordinarily exercise its jurisdiction
under Article 136, unless the appellant has exhausted all other remedies open to him.

Further, the SC in the case of, Ramsaran Das And Bros vs Commercial Tax Officer4,
observed that it has been frequently noticed that appeals had been filed to this court without
exhausting all the remedies open to appellants and that ordinarily this Court would not allow the
High Courts to be bypassed and the appropriate course for an appellant was to exhaust all his
remedies before invoking the jurisdiction of this Court under Art. 136 of the constitution.

1
Nirma LTD vs. M/s. Lurgi Lentges Energietechnik GMB H (2002) 5 SCC 520
2
(2009(14) SCC 16)
3
(2008) 10 SCC 128
4
1962 SCR Supl. (1) 276
The SC in Pritam Singh vs the state5 _ it is to be exercised sparingly and in exceptional cases
only, and as far as possible, a more or less uniform standard should be adopted in granting SLP
in the wide range of matters which can come up before it under this article.

The determination or order must be judicial or quasi judicial, A purely administrative or

executive direction cannot be a subject matter of appeal to the SC 6

CLEAN HANDS

In Hari Narain v. Badri Das AIR 1963 SC 1558, this Court adverted to the aforesaid rule and
revoked the leave granted to the appellant by making the following observations: “It is of utmost
importance that in making material statements and setting forth grounds in applications
or special leave made under Article 136 of the Constitution, care must be taken not to make any
statements which are inaccurate, untrue and misleading. In dealing with applications for special
leave, the Court naturally takes statements of fact and grounds of fact contained in the petitions
at their face value and it would be unfair to betray the confidence of the Court by
making statements which are untrue and misleading. Thus, if at the hearing of the appeal the
Supreme Court is satisfied that the material statements made by the appellant in his application
or special leave are inaccurate and misleading, and the respondent is entitled to contend that the
appellant may have obtained special leave from the Supreme Court on the strength of what he
characterizes as misrepresentations of facts contained in the petition for special leave, the
Supreme Court may come to the conclusion that in such a case special leave granted to the
appellant ought to be revoked.”

In K.D. Sharma v. Steel Authority of India Ltd. and others7 , the court held that the jurisdiction
of the Supreme Court under Article 32 and of the High Court under Article 226 of the
Constitution is extraordinary, equitable and discretionary and it is imperative that the petitioner
approaching the Writ Court must come with clean hands and put forward all the facts before the
Court without concealing or suppressing anything and seek an appropriate relief. If there is no
candid disclosure of relevant and material facts or the petitioner is guilty of misleading the Court,
his petition may be dismissed at the threshold without considering the merits of the claim. The
same rule was reiterated in G. Jayshree and others v. Bhagwandas S. Patel and others8

Subs Q of law and of Pub importance

It is not the policy of this Court to entertain special leave petitions and grant leave under Article
136 of the Constitution save in those cases where some substantial question of law of general or
public importance is involved or there is manifest injustice resulting from the impugned order or
judgment.

5
1950 SCR 453
6
SHAH J in Jaswant sugar mills vs lakshmi chand AIR 1963 SC 677
7
(2008) 12 SCC 481
8
(2009) 3 SCC 141
The court emphasized “the only uniform standard which in our opinion can be laid down in the
circumstances is that the court should grant special leave to appeal in those cases where special
circumstances are shown to exist.” Generally the court will not grant special leave unless it is
shown that exceptional and special circumstances exist, that substantial and grave injustice has
been done and that the case in question presents features of sufficient gravity to warrant a review
of the decision appealed against”

It appears prima facie that the order in que cannot be justified by any judicial standard, the ends
of justice and the need to maintain judicial discipline require the SC to intervene9

9
UOI vs, Era educational trust AIR 2000 SC 1573