Introduction – The case of Kunhayammed
and Others v. State of Kerala and Another[1]
was concerned with a very important question of law in the realm of civil
procedural laws. The subject matter of the case touched upon the doctrine of
merger and res judicata in civil cases and posed a substantial question on the
deeper nuances of its applicability. Before discussing the technicalities of
the judgement and the arguments presented by the respective sides, let us delve
briefly into the facts of the matter.
The Kerala Private Forests (Vesting and
Assignment) Act, 1971 provided for the vesting in the Government of private
forests in Kerala and for its assignment to agriculturists for cultivation. It
was also provided that any disputes on the question(s) whether any land was a
private forest or not, and, whether any private forest was vested in the
Government or not, would be decided by the Forest Tribunal constituted under
section 7. Appeals against any such decision could be made to the High Court
under section 8-A within a period of 60 days from the date of decision.
In a particular dispute before the Forest
Tribunal, Kozhikode involving 1020 acres of land, it was ruled on 11-8-1982 that
the land did not vest in the Government. The State Government filed an appeal
in the High Court that was subsequently dismissed on 17-12-1982. In the
statute, no further mechanism of appeal or review had been provided to the
parties. In such a scenario, the State chose to approach the Apex Court under
Article 136 of the Constitution of India by way of a Special Leave Petition. However,
this petition was dismissed on 18-7-1983 by an order that only stated the
following – “Special leave petition is dismissed on merits.”
A little while later, in January 1984,
the Government went before the Kerala High Court and filed a review application
of its earlier order. The original petitioners in this matter raised a
preliminary objection concerning the maintainability of the review petition. The
High Court overruled these objections petition and decided to proceed further
on the merits of the subject-matter. The petitioners then sought for leave to
appeal to the Supreme Court, which was granted.
The two contentions that were primarily
preferred by the appellants before the Supreme Court were that, first, the
order passed by the Kerala High Court had merged into the order of the Supreme Court
dismissing the SLP. Therefore, the consequence of such merger was that the order
of the High Court had ceased to exist in the eye of law and the review application
cannot be filed before the High Court. Secondly, the appellants put forth that
the effect of the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the SLP was that the High
Court’s decision had been affirmed. Thus, a further review petition could not
be entertained.