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Civil Petition No.172‑R of 1984, decided on 17th March, 1985.

(From the order dated 3‑4‑1984 of the Lahore High Court, Rawalpindi Bench, passed in Writ Petition No.94 of 1984Y.

‑‑‑Art. 185(3)‑‑Civil Procedure Code (V of 1908), S.152‑‑Amendment of judgment/decree challenged‑‑Plea that under changed law, decree having become ineffective, order of amendment was‑without jurisdiction, repelled‑‑If decree had lost its efficacy, position would not get altered by a correction made in it, because, position of corrected decree would be no better than uncorrected one‑‑Petition being devoid of merits, dismissed.

Abdul Hakeem Khan, Senior Advocate of Supreme Court instructed by Ch. Akhtar Ali,

Advocate‑on-Record for Petitioners.

Nemo for Respondents.

Date of hearing: 17th March, 1985.

‑A gift of land made on 12‑5‑1951 in favour of the petitioner by their mother, a limited owner, under Mutations Nos.2930 and 2942, dated 17‑5‑1951, was challenged by Bagh Ali and others (predecessors‑in‑interest of the respondents) through a declaratory suit. The suit was decreed on 16‑5‑1952 and the gift in dispute‑was held to be void. The judgment, however, made mention only of Mutation No.2930 although the title clearly cited both the mutations. An application was made by Bagh Ali etc. on 14‑12‑1972 under section 152, C.P.C. for amendment of the judgment and the decree but the same was rejected on 1‑10‑1976, whereupon they filed a revision petition which was accepted by the Additional District Judge, Rawalpindi, on 17‑1‑1984, in the result of which the other mutation, that is, No.2942, was also incorporated in the‑trial Court's Judgment‑ The petitioners challenged the order of the Additional District Judge in the writ jurisdiction of the High Court but their petition was dismissed by the impugned order dated 3‑4‑1984.

2. The contention of learned counsel for the petitioners is that in view of the amendment made 'in the West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Act, 1962, by Ordinance XIII of 1983, whereby a new section 2‑A was inserted, the decree passed by the trial Court had become ineffective and as such the Additional District Judge had no jurisdiction to order any correction in the same. This point had been raised before and dealt with by the High Court in the following words:

"But whether the decree itself has any legal effect or not is a question which remains unaffected by the amendment of judgment and the direction of the learned Additional District Judge ordering amendment in the judgment obviously will not effect the rights, if any, which the petitioners claim under section 2‑A of the Act of 1962 which has been introduced by Ordinance XIII of 1983."

3. Obviously, if the decree passed on 16‑5‑1952 had, by virtue of section 2‑A of the Act, lost its efficacy, the position would not get altered by a correction made in the same because the position of the corrected decree would be no better than the uncorrected one. The question whether the decree had become inoperative was, however, and rightly so, left open by the High Court. We thus find no merit in this petition which we hereby dismiss.

M.I. Petition dismissed.

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