1. Gwyer, C.J.:—These are two ex parte applications for a review of judgments delivered by this Court on March 18th last. They are the first applications of the kind which have come before us, and it is desirable that we should state the principles which the Court will take for its guidance in deciding them.

2. This Court will not sit as a court of appeal from its own decisions, nor will it entertain applications to review on the ground only that one of the parties in the case conceives himself to be aggrieved by the decision. It would in our opinion be intolerable and most prejudicial to the public interest if cases once decided by the Court could be re-opened and re-heard: “There is a salutary maxim which ought to be observed by all Courts of last resort— Interest reipublicae at sit finis litium. Its strict observance may occasionally entail hardship upon individual litigants, but the mischief arising from that source must be small in comparison with the great mischief which would necessarily result from doubt being thrown upon the finality of the decisions of such a tribunal as this”: Venkata Narasimha Appa Row v. Court of Wards.

3.  This Court is not, it is true, a Court of last resort in the sense in which the Judicial Committee or the House of Lords may be so described in the United Kingdom; but it is the highest tribunal sitting in this country and no appeal lies without leave from any decision given by it in the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction. The High Courts in British India have been given a limited power to review their judgments by s. 114 of, and O. XLVII of the First Schedule to, the Civil Procedure Code. This Court has power under s. 214 (1) of the Constitution Act to make rules of Court for regulating generally the practice and procedure of the Court; but it has made no rules for regulating applications for a review of its judgments, and in these circumstances it is unnecessary to consider whether its rule-making power is wide enough to enable it to assume a general jurisdiction for that purpose, in the absence of express statutory provisions such as are to be found in s. 114 of the Code. If at the present moment it has power to review its own judgments, that power should not in our opinion be regarded as more extensive than the power exercised for the same purpose by the Judicial Committee and should be subject to similar restrictions; and we conceive that the rules which govern the practice of the Judicial Committee and of the House of Lords in these matters may rightly be taken as a guide to the practice of this Court also.

4. The practice in England is well settled and of long standing. In Rajunder Narain Rae v. Bijai Govind Singh, Lord Brougham, delivering the judgment of the Judicial Committee, said:—“It is unquestionably the strict rule, and ought to be distinctly understood as such, that no cause in this Court can be re-heard, and that an order once made, that is a report submitted to His Majesty and adopted, by being made an Order in Council, is final and cannot be altered. The same is the case of the judgments of the House of Lords, that is, of the Court of Parliament, or of the King in Parliament as it is sometimes expressed, the only other supreme tribunal in this country. Whatever, therefore, has been really determined in these Courts must stand, there being no power of rehearing for the purpose of changing the judgment pronounced; nevertheless, if by misprision in embodying the judgments, errors have been introduced, these Courts possess, by common law, the same power which the Courts of Record and Statute have of rectifying the mistakes which have crept in … The House of Lords exercises a similar power of rectifying mistakes made in drawing up its own judgments, and this Court must possess the same authority. The Lords have, however, gone a step further, and have corrected mistakes introduced through inadvertence in the details of judgments; or have supplied manifest defects in order to enable the decrees to be enforced, or have added explanatory matter, or have reconciled inconsistencies. But with the exception of one or two cases in 1669, of doubtful authority, here, and another in Parliament of still less weight in 1642 (which was an appeal from the Privy Council to Parliament, and at a time when the Government was in an unsettled state), no instance, it is believed, can be produced of a re-hearing upon the whole cause, and an entire alteration of the judgment once pronounced”.

5. And, after giving instances in which the power of rectifying mistakes and errors had been exercised, he continued:—“It is impossible to doubt that the indulgence extended in such cases is mainly owing to the natural desire prevailing to prevent irremediable injustice being done by a Court of last resort, where by some accident, without any blame, the party has not been heard and an order has been inadvertently made as if the party had been heard.”

6. In Hebbert v. Purcha  the respondent had petitioned for a re-hearing on the ground that the appeal had been heard ex parte because of his want of means to brief counsel and his own inability to argue the case, and also because the judgment of the Judicial Committee in the appeal was at variance with former decisions of the Committee; but the Lord Chancellor (Lord Hatherley), delivering the judgment of the Committee, said:—“Having carefully weighed the arguments, and considering the great public mischief which would arise on any doubt being thrown on the finality of the decisions of the Judicial Committee. Their Lordships are of opinion that expediency requires that the prayer of the petitioners should not be acceded to and that they should be refused with costs.”

7. The general principle remains as it was enunciated a century ago. It is recognized by the Judicial Committee that in certain exceptional circumstances an application for a re-hearing may be entertained, but the cases in which this will be done have not been substantially enlarged since they were explained by Lord Brougham in the passage already cited, though Lord Watson, delivering the judgment of the Judicial Committee in Srimantu Raja Yarlagaddu Durga v. Srimantu Mallikarjuna included cases where some misprision had occurred, “as for instance, the terms of the decree adjudicating something which had not been in the view of Their Lordships' Board, or which they had not had the means of deciding, or where the decree did not carry out the terms of the judgment”. In no case however has any re-hearing been allowed upon the merits or even on the ground that new matter has been discovered, which, if it had been produced at the hearing of the appeal, might materially have affected the judgment of the Committee: Venkata Narasimha Appa Row v. Court of Wards.

8. We turn now to the facts of the two cases which are before us.

9.  In the first case counsel for the appellant informed us at the original hearing that the only point which he desired to argue was the application of a certain section in an Act of the Bihar Legislature. This point had not been raised at any previous stage of the litigation and the particular section was not even mentioned in the petition of appeal. We saw no reason in these circumstances for giving leave to amend the petition, and the appeal was accordingly dismissed with costs. The application for review which was subsequently filed alleged that the appellant was prejudiced on account of the laches of the respondents in appearing and filing a statement of their case on the day of the hearing of the appeal. At the hearing of the application however counsel relied mainly upon another ground, viz., that the judgment of the High Court on the application for a certificate under s. 205 of the Constitution Act was not produced before this Court when the appeal was heard. We have now seen the judgment of the High Court, the existence and indeed the terms of which must have been known to the parties or their advisers when the appeal was heard, and there is nothing in it which could be of the slightest assistance to the applicant. As to the alleged laches of the respondents, an appellant must succeed by the merits of his own case and not by the laches of his opponents; and it is hard to see how the present applicant could have been prejudiced, since his appeal was dismissed without the respondents being called upon to argue the merits of the case. The applicant is in effect inviting this Court to re-hear his appeal upon the merits, because he thinks that the Court was in error in dismissing it. There is in our opinion no justification for the application and it should never have been filed.

10. In the second case the applicant appeared in person and submitted a written argument. He had been in the main successful on those points which were argued on the appeal, but he appears to be of opinion that the interest which he was ordered to pay on the reduced amount of his debt should have been fixed at a lower rate. He complained also of the conduct of his Agent in not communicating with him early enough with regard to the date when the appeal was to be heard and in applying to the Court too late for an adjournment. There may be some substance in his complaint against the Agent, but it is not a matter with which this Court can deal on the present application. He desired to take points which were not argued by his counsel at all in the High Court or this Court; and he also alleged that his counsel was not properly instructed and so could not present his case fully at the hearing before us. If counsel had felt that he could not do justice to his client's case without a further study of his instructions, he would doubtless have asked for the indulgence of the Court; but no such request was made, and it is a matter for counsel's discretion how a case is presented to the tribunal and which points are pressed or abandoned. This applicant also is asking us to re-hear the whole appeal upon the merits.

11. The power which we are invited to exercise in these two cases is one to be exercised with extreme caution and only in very exceptional cases; and applications for its exercise will not be encouraged by this Court. Neither applicant has brought himself, even remotely, within any of the exceptions to the general rule. Both applications are dismissed; and we think it right to say that future applications of the kind will run the risk of receiving more summary treatment.Applications dismissed.

12.  Agent for Raja Prithwi Chand Lall Choudhry: G. Sahay