Constitution of Civil Courts in Haryana

Every civil suit filed in Haryana - from a partition dispute in Rohtak to a recovery claim in Gurugram - is heard by a court whose very existence is traced to the Punjab Courts Act, 1918. The Act is the constitutive statute: it does not merely regulate procedure, it creates the courts, fixes their classes, and channels the appointment, jurisdiction and administrative control that make a judge a court of law. For the Haryana aspirant, mastering Sections 18 to 39 is non-negotiable, because they decide where a plaint is presented, what it is worth, who controls the court, and where an appeal travels. This note maps that skeleton section by section, distinguishing the Haryana position from the Delhi-extended version that examiners love to confuse with it.

Why the Act Constitutes - Not Merely Regulates - Courts

The Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 presupposes the existence of civil courts; it nowhere creates them. That creative function, in Haryana, is performed by the Punjab Courts Act, 1918, which the Reorganisation arrangements after 1966 carried forward as the law in force for the new State. The Act is therefore the parent constitutive statute, while the CPC supplies the working procedure. A court's existence and its powers are distinct ideas: as the Calcutta Full Bench explained in Hriday Nath Roy v. Ram Chandra Barua Sarma, jurisdiction is "the authority which a Court has to decide matters that are litigated before it," and the power to decide carries with it the power to decide wrongly as well as rightly. The Punjab Courts Act supplies that authority; the correctness of any decision is a separate question reviewable on appeal. The Supreme Court reinforced the point in Official Trustee v. Sachindra Nath Chatterjee, AIR 1969 SC 823, holding that a court must have authority not only over the subject-matter but also to decide the particular controversy and grant the relief claimed. Reading the Act against that backdrop shows why the sequence of provisions - classes, districts, appointment, jurisdiction, control, appeal - is not accidental but a complete constitutional grammar for civil adjudication. For the wider statutory setting, see our introduction to the Punjab Courts Act on the Punjab Courts Act hub.

Section 18: The Classes of Civil Courts

Section 18 is the foundation stone. It declares that, besides the Courts of Small Causes established under the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act, 1887, and courts created by any other enactment in force, there shall be the following classes of civil courts: (1) the Court of the District Judge, and (3) the Court of the Subordinate Judge - clause (2), which had provided for an intermediate class, having been omitted by amendment. The numbering gap is deliberate and frequently tested. The Small Cause Courts are expressly kept outside the Section 18 hierarchy because they are creatures of a separate Act, even though a Subordinate Judge may be invested with small-cause powers under Section 29. In Haryana the nomenclature "Subordinate Judge" has, in practice and by later amendment, given way to Civil Judge (Senior Division) and Civil Judge (Junior Division), mirroring the all-India pattern, but the statutory class created by Section 18 remains a single class of "Subordinate Judge" sub-divided by the powers conferred. The two operative tiers - District Judge above, Civil Judge below - are exhaustively treated in our note on classes of courts.

Section 19: Division Into Civil Districts

A court must sit somewhere; Section 19 supplies the territorial canvas. It empowers the State Government to divide the territories under its administration into civil districts and to alter their limits or number from time to time. In Haryana the civil districts broadly track the revenue districts - Ambala, Hisar, Karnal, Faridabad and the rest - so that each has its own District Court establishment. Section 19 is the source of territorial jurisdiction: the local limits within which a court may act flow from the district boundaries it draws, subject to the High Court's power under Section 27 to define a Subordinate Judge's local limits. The provision is administrative in character; it confers no judicial power but is indispensable, because Sections 20 and 22 require judges to be posted "to each district," presupposing that the districts already exist. When Haryana creates a new district, the District Court for the parent district continues to exercise jurisdiction over the carved-out area until a separate establishment is constituted and the limits are altered under Section 19(2).

Sections 20 and 24: The District Judge and the Principal Civil Court

Section 20 directs the State Government to appoint as many persons as it thinks necessary to be District Judges and to post one such person to each district as the District Judge of that district, with a proviso permitting the same person to be District Judge of two or more districts. The appointment of District Judges is, of course, governed in substance by Article 233 of the Constitution, which vests the appointing power in the Governor in consultation with the High Court; Section 20 supplies the statutory office that Article 233 fills. Section 24 then elevates that office: the Court of the District Judge "shall be deemed to be the District Court or principal Civil Court of original jurisdiction in the district." The phrase "principal Civil Court of original jurisdiction" is load-bearing - it is the expression used across allied statutes (the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, the Guardians and Wards Act, the Succession Act) to identify the forum competent to entertain applications, and Section 24 fixes that forum in Haryana as the District Court. The District Judge is thus simultaneously a trial court, an appellate court and the administrative head of the district judiciary.

Section 25: Unlimited Original Jurisdiction of the District Judge

Section 25 defines the District Judge's original civil jurisdiction. In its un-amended Punjab/Haryana form it confers jurisdiction "in original civil suits without limit as regards the value" - that is, an unlimited pecuniary jurisdiction at the trial level. This is the single most important point of divergence from the Delhi-extended version of the same Act, where Section 25 was amended to cap the District Judge's original jurisdiction (raised in stages to rupees twenty lakh by Central Act 35 of 2003). Examiners routinely set a trap by importing the Delhi figure into a Haryana question; the correct Haryana answer is that the District Court's original civil jurisdiction is, in principle, unlimited, the practical allocation of suits being managed through the distribution power in Section 34 rather than a statutory ceiling. The District Judge therefore stands at the apex of original jurisdiction and is the residuary forum for any suit not specifically allotted elsewhere. The detailed value-based scheme is developed in our note on pecuniary jurisdiction of civil courts.

Sections 22, 26 and 27: The Subordinate Judge / Civil Judge

Below the District Judge sits the workhorse of the system. Section 22 authorises the State Government, after consultation with the High Court, to fix the number of Subordinate Judges to be appointed. Section 26 governs their pecuniary reach: "the jurisdiction to be exercised in original civil suits as regards the value by any person appointed to be a Subordinate Judge shall be determined by the High Court either by including him in a class or otherwise as it thinks fit." The Act thus delegates pecuniary classification to the High Court rather than fixing fixed slabs in the statute. In Haryana this power has produced the two functional grades: the Civil Judge (Senior Division), who in practice exercises unlimited pecuniary jurisdiction in original suits, and the Civil Judge (Junior Division), who exercises jurisdiction up to a value fixed by the High Court (commonly extended once a minimum period of service is completed). Section 27 completes the picture by empowering the High Court to define the local limits of a Subordinate Judge's jurisdiction, with a default rule that on posting to a district the limits of the district become his limits unless the High Court directs otherwise. Pecuniary jurisdiction (Section 26) and territorial jurisdiction (Section 27) together fix exactly which Civil Judge a given plaint must go to.

Sections 28 to 30: Special Judges, Small-Cause and District Powers

Three provisions add flexibility to the basic two-tier scheme. Section 28 empowers the State Government, after consultation with the High Court, to appoint an Honorary Subordinate Judge and the High Court to confer on him any of the powers of a Subordinate Judge; it also permits an uneven number of such persons to be directed to sit together as a bench, the decision of the majority being the decision of the bench. Section 29 lets the High Court, by notification, invest a Subordinate Judge with the jurisdiction of a Judge of a Court of Small Causes under the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act, 1887, up to a value the High Court thinks fit, and to withdraw that jurisdiction - the statutory bridge between the Section 18 hierarchy and the small-cause stream. Section 30 allows the High Court to authorise a Subordinate Judge to take cognizance of, or a District Judge to transfer to a Subordinate Judge, certain proceedings (notably probate and administration matters), with the District Judge retaining power to withdraw and re-allot them. These provisions explain how a single Civil Judge in Haryana can simultaneously try ordinary suits, dispose of small causes, and handle succession proceedings under one roof.

Section 31: Where the Court Sits

Section 31 answers a deceptively simple question: where, physically, does a constituted court hold its sittings? The High Court may fix the place or places at which any court under the Act is to be held; significantly, sub-section (2) provides that the place so fixed may be beyond the local limits of the jurisdiction of the court, and sub-section (3) provides that, absent any such order, a court may be held at any place within its local limits. The provision matters because territorial jurisdiction (the area over which a court has authority) and the place of sitting (where it physically functions) are conceptually different. A District Judge's establishment may, for instance, sit at the district headquarters while exercising authority over the entire district; outlying tehsil courts are created by fixing the place of sitting under Section 31 read with the distribution power in Section 34. Section 31 thus translates the abstract grant of jurisdiction into a working courtroom at a defined location.

Sections 33 and 34: Control and Distribution of Business

A hierarchy needs a head, and Section 33 supplies one: "subject to the general superintendence and control of the High Court, the District Judge shall have control over all the Civil Courts under this Part within the local limits of his jurisdiction." This administrative control - over postings, inspections, and the day-to-day discipline of the subordinate courts - is layered beneath the High Court's constitutional superintendence under Article 235. Section 34 gives the control teeth: notwithstanding anything in the Code of Civil Procedure, every District Judge may, by written order, direct that civil business cognizable by his court and the courts under his control shall be distributed among those courts as he thinks fit, subject to the proviso that no direction may empower a court to act beyond the limits of its own jurisdiction. Section 34 is the practical engine of the Haryana civil hierarchy: because the District Judge enjoys unlimited original jurisdiction under Section 25, it is the distribution order under Section 34 - not a statutory ceiling - that channels suits to the appropriate Civil Judge. Control under Section 33 and distribution under Section 34 together make the District Judge the operational nerve-centre of the district judiciary.

Sections 38 and 39: How Appeals Flow Through the Hierarchy

The constitution of courts is incomplete without an appellate channel, and Sections 38 and 39 wire it up. Section 38 provides that, save as otherwise enacted, an appeal from a decree or order of a District Judge or Additional District Judge exercising original jurisdiction lies to the High Court, with the rider that no appeal lies from an Additional District Judge where none would have lain had the decree been passed by the District Judge. Section 39 deals with appeals from a Subordinate Judge: depending on the value of the original suit, the appeal lies either to the District Judge (for suits below a threshold fixed by the legislature) or to the High Court in any other case, and sub-sections (2) and (2A) allow such district-level appeals to be heard by an Additional District Judge to whom the District Judge or the High Court makes them over. The value thresholds in Section 39 have been amended differently in Delhi and in Punjab/Haryana, so the structural rule - value decides the forum - matters more than any single figure. The full appellate map, including second appeals under Sections 41 and 42 and revision under Section 44, is set out in our note on appellate jurisdiction.

The Outer Limit: When Civil Court Jurisdiction Is Excluded

The courts constituted by the Punjab Courts Act enjoy the plenary civil jurisdiction recognised by Section 9 of the CPC - they may try all suits of a civil nature except those expressly or impliedly barred. The leading authority on that outer boundary is the Constitution Bench decision in Dhulabhai v. State of Madhya Pradesh, AIR 1969 SC 78, which laid down that an exclusion of civil-court jurisdiction is not readily to be inferred; where a statute gives finality to the orders of a special tribunal, the civil court's jurisdiction is excluded only if the statute provides an adequate alternative remedy and the impugned action is within the statute, and even then a civil court may examine whether the statutory provisions have been complied with or whether the order is a nullity. For Haryana practice this means that a District Court or Civil Judge cannot decline a suit merely because a special forum exists; it must find a clear statutory ouster satisfying the Dhulabhai tests. The combined effect of Section 18 (which creates the courts), Section 25 and Section 26 (which size their jurisdiction) and Section 9 CPC (which presumes it) is a system of general civil courts of plenary competence, narrowed only by clearly expressed legislative exclusion.