BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 History of Courts 2024-25 - ATKT 60/40 Question Paper with Solutions

Codification is essential because it makes the law certain, accessible and uniform. A code states the whole law on a subject in one authoritative written enactment, so that a citizen can know his rights in advance, a court can apply the same rule in every district, and the law does not have to be searched for through scattered statutes, custom and case law.

In India it was essential for a further reason: before the codes, the law a litigant received depended on which court took his case, since the Crown's courts applied English law and the Company's Adalats applied personal law and Regulations.

Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General from 1786 to 1793, overhauled the entire Adalat system. His reforms came in three stages, in 1787, 1790 and above all in the Cornwallis Code of 1793.

The Code of 1793 stripped the Collector of all judicial power and gave each district a separate District Judge, abolished the Mal Adalats so that revenue disputes went to the ordinary civil courts, created four Provincial Courts of Appeal, made the Government suable in its own courts, and for the first time regulated the legal profession by enrolling vakils and fixing their fees.

Lord Cornwallis is regarded as the pioneer of the Rule of Law in India, through the Cornwallis Code of 1793.

He established it in two ways. He separated the judiciary from the executive, taking all judicial power from the revenue Collector and giving each district a District Judge with no revenue duty; and he made the Government itself suable in its own courts, so that the Company and its officers could be sued in the Diwani Adalats and judgment given against them. Subjecting the executive to the ordinary courts is the essence of the Rule of Law.

The main outcome was the establishment of a system of authoritative, official law reporting, and with it the working of the doctrine of precedent in India.

The Indian Law Reports Act, 1875 made it obligatory for the High Courts to have their judgments reported in an authorised series, the Indian Law Reports, and provided that no court should be bound to hear cited, as an authority, any report of a High Court decision other than a report published under the authority of the Government. The outcome was that judgments became accessible, accurate and citable, so that like cases could be decided alike.

The writ of prohibition is an order issued by a superior court to an inferior court or tribunal, forbidding it to continue proceedings in a matter which is beyond its jurisdiction, or in which it is acting in violation of the principles of natural justice or contrary to law.

It is a preventive writ. It is available only while the proceedings are pending, and it lies only against judicial or quasi-judicial bodies. In India it is issued by the Supreme Court under Article 32 and by the High Courts under Article 226.

What it was

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, sitting in London, was the highest court of appeal for India from 1726 until 1949, and for the British Empire generally. Its significance for Indian law is out of all proportion to the fact that it never sat in India.

How Indian appeals reached it

The Charter of 1726 first gave Indian litigants an appeal to the King-in-Council, from the Governor-in-Council, where the sum exceeded 1,000 pagodas. The Act of Settlement, 1781 allowed appeals from the Sadar Diwani Adalat. The Judicial Committee was constituted as a formal court by the Judicial Committee Act, 1833, at Lord Brougham's instance, and by the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1908 it was to include Indian judges.

Its significance

1. It gave India the doctrine of precedent. Its decisions bound all Indian courts, and it was through the Privy Council that stare decisis and the citation of authority became the method of Indian law.

1. It sat five thousand miles away; an appeal was slow and extremely costly, so in practice it served the rich and the Government.
2. Its judges had no direct knowledge of Indian conditions, and some of its decisions are criticised for freezing custom into rigid rules.
3. It was a foreign court administering the law of a country in which it did not sit, which became politically unacceptable as self-government approached.

Abolition

The Federal Court (1937) took part of its work; the Federal Court (Enlargement of Jurisdiction) Act, 1947 transferred its civil appellate jurisdiction; the Abolition of Privy Council Jurisdiction Act, 1949 ended the appeal; and the Supreme Court of India, constituted on 28 January 1950, succeeded to it.

7. To organise legal aid to the poor in the prescribed manner.
8. To manage and invest the funds of the Bar Council.
9. To provide for the election of its members.
10. To visit and inspect universities in accordance with the directions given by the Bar Council of India.
11. To perform all other functions conferred by the Act, and to do all things necessary for discharging them.

Committees

The State Bar Council constitutes: a Disciplinary Committee (section 9) of three members, two elected from the Council and one co-opted advocate of not less than ten years' standing; a Legal Aid Committee (section 9A); an Executive Committee and an Enrolment Committee (section 10); and it may constitute others.

Establishment

The Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Calcutta was established by a Royal Charter dated 26 March 1774, issued by George III under the authority of section 13 of the Regulating Act, 1773. It began sitting in October 1774.

Composition

A Chief Justice and three puisne judges, appointed by the Crown, who had to be English barristers of not less than five years' standing. The first bench was Sir Elijah Impey (Chief Justice), Robert Chambers, Stephen Caesar Lemaistre and John Hyde.

Jurisdiction

1. Civil: over all British subjects residing in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa; the servants of the Company; and any other person who submitted in writing to its jurisdiction in a matter exceeding 500 rupees.

How it worked in practice

The Court's working is the story of its conflict with the Governor-General in Council, because the Regulating Act had defined neither its jurisdiction nor its relation to the Company's government:

1. Nandkumar (1775): an Indian was hanged for forgery under an English statute for an act done before the Court existed, in circumstances that made the trial notorious as a judicial murder.
2. The Kamaluddin and Swaroop Chand cases (1775 onwards): the Court granted habeas corpus to revenue farmers imprisoned for arrears, which the Council said made the collection of revenue impossible.
3. The Patna Case (1777 to 1779): the Court awarded Rs 3,00,000 against the Kazi and Muftis of the Patna Provincial Council for acts done in office, which paralysed the country courts.
4. The Cossijurah Case (1779 to 1780): the Council sent sepoys who seized the Court's Sheriff, and then refused to appear when sued personally.

Meaning

The doctrine of separation of powers requires that the legislative, executive and judicial functions of government be exercised by three distinct organs, and that no organ exercise the functions of another or control the persons who do.

Origin

Traceable to Aristotle and Locke, its classical statement is by Montesquieu in De l'Esprit des Lois (1748). His argument was practical: power should be a check upon power, for when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person there can be no liberty, and if the judicial power is joined to either, the judge becomes an oppressor.

Objects

To prevent the concentration of power and so tyranny; to secure individual liberty; to secure efficiency by specialisation; and above all to secure the independence of the judiciary.

The courts

Ram Jawaya Kapur v. State of Punjab (1955): the Constitution does not recognise the doctrine in its absolute rigidity, but the functions of the organs are sufficiently differentiated. Kesavananda Bharati (1973) and Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain (1975): separation of powers is part of the basic structure.

B) What were the effects of the decision held in this case?

The facts in brief

Shahbaz Beg Khan, an Afghan in the Company's military service, died childless at Patna. His widow Naderah Begum claimed his estate under a deed of gift (hibanama); his nephew Bahadur Beg claimed it as adopted son. Bahadur Beg applied to the Patna Provincial Council, which sent its law officers, the Kazi and two Muftis, to examine and report. They seized the property, reported the widow's deeds forged, and the Council decreed the estate to Bahadur Beg, leaving her a one-fourth share. She sued in the Supreme Court at Calcutta for assault, battery, false imprisonment, breaking her house and depriving her of property, and the Court awarded her Rs 3,00,000 in damages, imprisoning the defendants on non-payment.

1. It exposed the Company's judicial machinery. A Provincial Council had decided the ownership of an estate on a report, without a trial. The case is the standing proof that the administration of justice in the mofussil was inadequate.
2. It provoked the Governor-General in Council, which protested that district officers had been made personally liable at Calcutta, under a foreign law, for what they did in office.
3. It brought the country courts to a standstill. No Kazi, Mufti or member of a Provincial Council could act safely while liable to be sued, and the fear of process disrupted justice throughout the districts.
4. It alarmed the population, since the reach of the Supreme Court was now unknown even to those who administered the law.
5. It led to a parliamentary inquiry by a Select Committee of the House of Commons into the administration of justice in Bengal.
6. It produced the Act of Settlement, 1781, several of whose provisions answer this case directly:

• judicial officers of the country courts were protected for acts done in their judicial capacity;

B) Describe the effects of the judgment.

(A) The facts

1. Kamaluddin Ali Khan was a revenue farmer. He held a farm as the ostensible holder, that is in his own name but on behalf of Kanta Babu, the banian of Warren Hastings, who was the real party in interest.
2. Arrears of revenue were found due on the farm.
3. The Calcutta Revenue Council, the Committee of Revenue, ordered his committal to prison for the arrears, without bail, under the summary powers the Company's officers exercised in revenue matters.

(B) The effects of the judgment

1. It asserted the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over revenue matters and over the Company's revenue officers, which the Council regarded as an intrusion into the one department on which the Company's existence depended.
2. It alarmed the revenue administration. If every defaulting farmer could obtain bail from Calcutta, the summary process by which revenue was realised would be unworkable. The Council protested in the strongest terms.
3. It applied English safeguards for personal liberty to Indian revenue collection, which was a real gain for the subject and an administrative embarrassment for the Government.
4. It sharpened the conflict between the Court and the Council which had begun with the Nandkumar case, and it was one of the cases laid before the parliamentary Select Committee.

A) Identify the case and briefly give the facts. B) What was the conflict between the Supreme Court and supreme council?

(A) The case, and the facts

The case is the Cossijurah Case (1779 to 1780).

1. Raja Sundernarayan, the zamindar of Cossijurah in Bengal, was heavily indebted to Cossinath Baboo, a merchant and a former servant of the Company.
2. Cossinath sued the Raja in the Supreme Court at Calcutta, alleging that the Raja was within its jurisdiction because he was employed by the Company in the collection of revenue, and so a person "employed by" it within the meaning of the Regulating Act, 1773.
3. The Supreme Court issued process, a writ of capias, for the Raja's arrest.

7. The Supreme Court then entertained an action by Cossinath against the Governor-General and the members of Council personally, and against the commanding officer, for the acts of the troops. The Governor-General and Council refused to appear, denying that the Court had any jurisdiction over them at all.
8. The Court's process was thus defeated by force. The matter went to Parliament, which appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the administration of justice in Bengal, and Parliament then passed the Act of Settlement, 1781.

(B) The conflict between the Court and the Council

The conflict was over the extent of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, and it had three parts:

1. Over whom did the Court have jurisdiction? The Regulating Act, 1773 gave it jurisdiction over "His Majesty's subjects" and over persons "employed by" the Company, and defined neither. The Court read "employed by" widely enough to include a zamindar who collected revenue for the Company. The Council read it to mean only those actually in the Company's service, and maintained that the Court was claiming jurisdiction over the whole native population, who had never consented to be governed by English law.

The settlement

The Act of Settlement, 1781 drew the line: it exempted the Governor-General and Council for acts done in their official capacity; excluded revenue matters; provided that no person was subject to the Court merely as a zamindar or farmer of revenue; protected the judicial officers of the country courts; directed that Hindu and Muslim law be applied to Hindus and Muslims; and made the Sadar Diwani Adalat a court of record with an appeal to the King-in-Council.

The facts

Swaroop Chand stood surety for the payment of the Company's revenue from Dacca, and acted as treasurer of the revenues of the Dacca provincial division. The balance due from him was fixed by the revenue authorities at Rs 10,000. He was afterwards found by those authorities to be in default to the treasury to the extent of Rs 66,745, and was proceeded against for the arrears and confined.

(A) The defence taken

1. The account was disputed and unsettled. The sum said to be due had never been determined by any judicial enquiry, and until the enquiry was complete no ascertained sum was owing from him.
2. He was liable only as a surety. A surety cannot be proceeded against until the principal debtor, the person primarily liable for the revenue, has been called on to pay and has been found unable to do so.
3. He had acted in a representative capacity, as treasurer of the provincial division, and the deposits he made were made in that capacity, not on his own account.
4. His imprisonment was therefore illegal, being for a sum still in dispute and against a person not primarily liable, and he sought the protection of the Supreme Court by habeas corpus.

The consequences

The Council protested that the decision struck at the collection of the revenue, on which the Company's existence in Bengal depended, and that if defaulting farmers and sureties could obtain bail from Calcutta, the summary process by which arrears were realised would be unworkable. The conflict, together with the Kamaluddin, Patna and Cossijurah cases, went to Parliament, and the Act of Settlement, 1781 expressly excluded revenue matters, and acts done in the collection of revenue, from the Supreme Court's jurisdiction.

For full marks, cover: the Charter of 1687, the Charter of 1726 and the Court's constitution and jurisdiction, how it actually worked, the causes of conflict with the Governor-in-Council, the specific disputes, the Charter of 1753 and its changes, and an assessment.

1. The Mayor's Court of 1687

The Charter of 1687, granted by the Company under powers given to it by James II, established at Madras a Corporation consisting of a Mayor, twelve Aldermen and sixty or more Burgesses, and with it a Mayor's Court. It was to try civil and criminal causes, to be a court of record, and to decide in a summary manner according to justice and good conscience and the laws of the Company. An appeal lay to the Admiralty Court.

Its essential character is that it was a Company court: it derived its authority from the Company, and a Recorder learned in the law was to assist it. It functioned until the Admiralty Court decayed, and its position became uncertain.

Appeals. From the Mayor's Court to the Governor-in-Council; and from the Governor-in-Council to the King-in-Council where the sum exceeded 1,000 pagodas.

Law applied. English law as it stood in 1726, which was thereby introduced into the Presidency towns.

3. How the Court worked in practice

1. Its judges were merchants, not lawyers. The Mayor and Aldermen were Company servants and traders, applying an English law they had not studied.
2. It had no guidance on the law to be applied to Indians, and applied English rules of inheritance, marriage and property to Hindus and Muslims for whom they were wholly unsuited.
3. Its members were the Company's own servants, so a suit against the Company, or against a senior servant, came before men who were subordinate to the defendant.
4. Its procedure was English, technical and slow, and litigants who did not speak English were at a disadvantage.

4. The conflict with the Governor-in-Council

The structural causes.

1. At Madras, the Court and the Governor quarrelled over the Court's claim to try suits between Indians touching caste and religious usage, and over the Governor's interference with its process. The Court insisted on its charter; the Governor insisted that the peace of the settlement was his responsibility.
2. At Bombay, the same conflict arose in the sharpest form, again on the jurisdiction of the Mayor's Court over natives in matters concerning their caste and religion, the Governor-in-Council maintaining that such disputes should be left to the parties' own communities.
3. At Calcutta, disputes arose over the Court's process against Company servants and over the Governor's refusal to enforce its orders.

3. A Court of Requests was established in each Presidency town to try small causes up to 20 pagodas cheaply and summarily, relieving the Mayor's Court of petty work.
4. The Mayor's Court became a Company court in substance, subordinate to the Governor-in-Council.

6. Assessment

Achievements. The Mayor's Courts introduced English law and English judicial procedure into India; established the appeal to the King-in-Council, which lasted until 1949; created courts of record with regular procedure and written records; and gave the Presidency towns their first settled civil justice.

Failures. The judges were not lawyers; the Court was not independent of the executive it was meant to control; it applied a foreign law to an Indian population; and its jurisdiction over Indians in personal matters was a standing grievance. The Charter of 1753 solved the conflict by subordinating the judiciary, which is a solution in the wrong direction, and the defect was not repaired until the Supreme Court of 1774 was created as an independent Crown court with professional judges.

3. Qualifications. A barrister of at least ten years' standing; or a member of the Indian Civil Service of at least ten years' standing who had served as a district judge for at least three years; or a pleader of a High Court of at least ten years' standing.
4. Tenure. A judge held office until the age of 60. He could be removed by His Majesty on the ground of misbehaviour or infirmity of mind or body, on a report of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council made on a reference by His Majesty.
5. Salaries were fixed by His Majesty in Council and charged on the revenues of the Province, and could not be varied to a judge's disadvantage.
6. Jurisdiction. Original and appellate jurisdiction as before, and superintendence over subordinate courts, but the power of superintendence was narrowed by section 224(2), which provided that nothing in it should be construed as giving the High Court any jurisdiction to question a judgment of an inferior court not otherwise subject to appeal or revision.

2. Appointment. By the President under Article 217, after consultation with the Chief Justice of India, the Governor of the State, and, for a puisne judge, the Chief Justice of the High Court. Since the Second and Third Judges Cases (1993, 1998) the opinion of the Chief Justice of India, formed with the collegium, has primacy, and the attempt to replace it by the NJAC was struck down in 2015.
3. Qualifications (Article 217(2)): a citizen of India who has held judicial office in India for ten years, or has been an advocate of a High Court for ten years.
4. Tenure. Until the age of 62 (Article 217(1)), raised from 60 by the Fifteenth Amendment, 1963.
5. Removal. Only by an order of the President after an address by both Houses of Parliament supported by a special majority, on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity (Article 217(1)(b) with Article 124(4)), with the machinery of the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968.
6. Transfer. By the President after consultation with the Chief Justice of India (Article 222), in the public interest only and never as punishment (Sankalchand Sheth, 1977).

Part 3: The comparison

What changed, and it is fundamental. First, the source of authority moved from an imperial statute to a sovereign constitution. Second, Article 226 universalised the writ jurisdiction, which had been the privilege of three cities, so that for the first time a litigant anywhere in India could compel a public authority to answer in his own High Court. Third, the independence of the judges was secured by a removal procedure requiring Parliament rather than the pleasure of the Crown, by the collegium in appointments, and by charging salaries on the Consolidated Fund. Fourth, there were now Fundamental Rights to enforce.

2. The Crown's courts

The Supreme Courts: Calcutta (1774), Madras (1801), Bombay (1823). Each had a Chief Justice and three puisne judges, who had to be English barristers of five years' standing, appointed by the Crown.

Jurisdiction: civil, criminal, equity, ecclesiastical and admiralty, and the prerogative writs, over British subjects, the Company's servants, and Indians who submitted or resided in the town. Appeal to the King-in-Council.

Law: English law, subject to the Act of Settlement's direction to apply personal law to Hindus and Muslims in inheritance, succession and contract.

3. The Company's courts

Civil: the Munsif and Sadar Amin courts for small causes; the District Diwani Adalat under a District Judge, as established by the Cornwallis Code of 1793; the Provincial Courts of Appeal; and the Sadar Diwani Adalat at the head, with an appeal to the King-in-Council in high-value suits.

Criminal: the Magistrates; the Courts of Circuit, created by Cornwallis in 1790 and abolished by Bentinck in 1829, their work passing to the Commissioners of Revenue and Circuit; and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat.

1. Conflict of jurisdiction, with no common superior in India to resolve it.
2. Different law for the same dispute, so that the outcome depended on the forum.
3. Forum shopping by litigants who could bring themselves within one system or the other.
4. Executive influence in the Company's courts, whose judges were the Company's own servants.
5. English law unsuited to those it was applied to in the towns; uncertain personal law for want of reports in the districts.
6. Delay and heavy arrears, especially in the Provincial Courts of Appeal.
7. No uniform precedent, because the two appellate lines were separate.

6. The reform movement, 1834 to 1861

1. Charter Act of 1833. The turning point. It created a Governor-General of India with legislative power for the whole of British India, ending the separate legislative authority of Bombay and Madras; appointed a Law Member to his Council, the first being Macaulay; and provided for the appointment of a Law Commission.

7. The amalgamation: the Indian High Courts Act, 1861

The Act abolished the Supreme Courts and the Sadar Diwani and Sadar Nizamat Adalats and merged their jurisdictions into a single High Court for each Presidency, constituted by Letters Patent in 1862 and re-issued in 1865. Each High Court had a Chief Justice and not more than fifteen puisne judges, of whom at least one-third barristers and at least one-third covenanted civil servants, so that both traditions sat on one bench. The Crown was empowered to establish further High Courts in other provinces, under which Allahabad followed in 1866.

Assessment

The dual system was never designed; it accumulated, because the Crown's courts were made for the Company's English servants in the trading towns and the Company's courts for the population of territories acquired later. It became intolerable when those two populations ceased to be separate. The reform of 1861 succeeded because the two preconditions had been met: a single legislature after 1833 and a single codified law by 1861.

4. discipline lay largely with the High Courts rather than with the profession;
5. there was no national body to set standards of conduct or of legal education.

2. The recommendations

1. The All India Bar Committee (1953), under Justice S. R. Das, recommended a unified Bar for the whole of India, a common roll, an all-India Bar Council and State Bar Councils, and the abolition of the different classes of practitioner.
2. The Fourteenth Report of the Law Commission of India (1958) on the Reform of Judicial Administration made the same recommendations and added proposals on legal education.

The Advocates Act, 1961 was enacted to give effect to both, and it repealed the Legal Practitioners Act, 1879 and the Indian Bar Councils Act, 1926.

3. The objectives of the Act

1. To amend and consolidate the law relating to legal practitioners.
2. To create a single class of practitioner, the advocate, and so a unified Bar.

1. One class of practitioner. The Act abolished vakils, pleaders, mukhtars, attorneys and the special status of barristers, and recognised only advocates, with senior advocates under section 16 as the single surviving distinction. The old grades were absorbed and the hierarchy of colonial origin disappeared.
2. An all-India right of practice. Under section 30, every advocate on a State roll may practise as of right throughout India, in all courts including the Supreme Court, before every tribunal and before any authority. This is the most practical change the Act made: before it, an advocate's professional life was bounded by the High Court that had enrolled him.
3. The end of racial and imperial privilege. The precedence of the English barrister was abolished, and admission depends solely on an Indian law degree and enrolment. The profession became fully Indian.

7. A monopoly of practice, with responsibilities. Section 29 makes advocates the only class entitled to practise law, and section 33 bars others from appearing. The monopoly is the counterpart of the duties the Act imposes.
8. Control of legal education. Under section 7(1)(h) and (i) the Bar Council of India lays down the standards of legal education and recognises the universities whose degree qualifies for enrolment. Out of this power came the five-year integrated LL.B. (1982), the compulsory practical papers, and the All India Bar Examination (2010).
9. Legal aid and welfare. Organising legal aid became a statutory function of the Bar Councils, and welfare funds for advocates followed.

6. Assessment

Achievements: the Act converted a set of graded, provincial, partly foreign professions into a single national profession governing itself. Its independence from the executive is a real constitutional value: a Bar that argues against the State for a living cannot safely be licensed by the State.

For full marks, cover: the source and the two articles, each of the five writs with its meaning, grounds, limits and a leading case, and then the principles of adjudication as a separate head, because the question asks for them separately.

1. Source and the two articles

The writs are prerogative writs of the English King's Bench, exercised in India by the Supreme Courts of the Presidency towns and, after 1861, by the three chartered High Courts only, and then only within their original civil jurisdiction. The Constitution made the power general:

1. Article 32: the Supreme Court may issue directions, orders or writs, including habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari, for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights. The right to move the Court under Article 32 is itself a Fundamental Right, which Dr Ambedkar called the "heart and soul" of the Constitution.

Meaning: an order to a public authority, corporation, inferior court or tribunal commanding it to perform a public duty it has failed to perform.

Requirements: a legal right in the applicant; a corresponding public duty, statutory or otherwise, in the respondent; a demand and refusal; and no equally efficacious alternative remedy.

It does not lie: against a private person or body owing no public duty; to enforce a contractual obligation; against the President or a Governor (Article 361); against a legislature to restrain it from legislating; nor to compel a discretion to be exercised in a particular way, though it lies to compel the authority to exercise its discretion.

3. Prohibition

Meaning: an order from a superior court to an inferior court or tribunal forbidding it to proceed in a matter beyond its jurisdiction or in violation of natural justice.

Features: preventive; available only while the proceeding is pending; lies only against judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, never against legislative or purely administrative action.

4. Certiorari ("to be certified")

1. Locus standi. Traditionally only the person aggrieved could apply. The rule has been relaxed for public interest litigation, so that a public-spirited person may move the court for those unable to do so, a development associated with S. P. Gupta v. Union of India (1981). In quo warranto the standing was always wide.
2. Existence of an alternative remedy. A writ is ordinarily refused where an equally efficacious statutory remedy exists. This is a rule of discretion, not of jurisdiction, and it yields where a Fundamental Right is infringed, where the order is without jurisdiction, or where natural justice has been violated.
3. Natural justice. The court applies nemo judex in causa sua, that no man may be a judge in his own cause, and audi alteram partem, that both sides must be heard.
4. No adjudication of disputed questions of fact. The jurisdiction is summary, on affidavit; a case turning on seriously contested facts is left to a regular suit.
5. Delay and laches. Relief may be refused to a petitioner who has slept on his rights, though there is no fixed period of limitation.
6. Conduct of the petitioner. He must come with clean hands and make full disclosure; suppression of material facts is by itself a ground of dismissal.