Chartered High Courts and Small Cause Courts

In one line

The Code is a general law, and these three Orders say which parts of it do not apply to Chartered High Courts, to Provincial Courts of Small Causes, and to Presidency Small Cause Courts.

Why the Code needs them

The Code of 1908 had to work across courts that already existed and already had their own rules. The Chartered High Courts of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were established by charter with their own original jurisdiction and their own practice. Small Cause Courts were created to dispose of small claims quickly, and much of the Code's machinery, designed for substantial suits, would defeat that purpose if applied to them.

So rather than rewrite the Code for each, the draftsman disapplied selected parts. That is all these Orders do, and it is why they are short and largely negative in form.

The hierarchy: sections 3 to 8

Section 3 fixes subordination for the purposes of the Code: the District Court is subordinate to the High Court, and every Civil Court of a grade inferior to that of a District Court, and every Court of Small Causes, is subordinate to the High Court and to the District Court.

That is the provision that makes revision under section 115 and reference under section 113 work, because both depend on a court being "subordinate" to the High Court. See [Reference, Review and Revision].

Section 5 applies the Code to Revenue Courts only so far as it is not inconsistent with the law in force relating to them, and permits the State Government to declare its application.

Section 6 preserves pecuniary jurisdiction: nothing in the Code shall operate to give any Court jurisdiction over suits the amount or value of whose subject matter exceeds the ordinary limits of its jurisdiction.

Sections 7 and 8 are the disapplying provisions for small causes.

Section 7: the following provisions shall not extend to Courts constituted under the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act, or to courts exercising the jurisdiction of a Court of Small Causes under that Act, or to courts in any part of India to which that Act does not extend exercising a corresponding jurisdiction: so much of the body of the Code as relates to suits excepted from the cognizance of a Court of Small Causes, the execution of decrees in such suits, and the execution of decrees against immovable property; and the following sections, section 9, and sections 91 and 92, among others as the section specifies.

Section 8: save as provided in sections 24, 38 to 41, 75(a), (b) and (c), 76, 77, 157 and 158, and by the Presidency Small Cause Courts Act, the Code shall not extend to any suit or proceeding in any Court of Small Causes established in the towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.