Srinagar: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh on Wednesday held that the scope of review is very limited in nature and it cannot be extended to the extent of rehearing the issues already considered and decided by the court.
Justices Rajnesh Oswal and M Yousuf Wani while dismissing a review petition by Shahjahan Rather and others (casual assignees) through senior advocate Riyaz Ahamd Jan held that the scope of review is very limited in nature, and it cannot be extended to the extent of rehearing the issues already considered and decided by the court.
“Even if it is assumed that the view taken by this court is not correct, still it cannot be a ground for review. A mere repetition of old and overruled arguments are insufficient for exercising jurisdiction of review. The power of review can be exercised for the correction of a mistake but not to substitute a view,” said the bench.
It added “such power can be exercised within the limits specified in the statute governing the exercise of such power.”
The petitioners sought review of the judgment passed by the High Court in April this year whereby the writ petition preferred by the petitioners agitating the order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal, Jammu, in July 2021 had been dismissed.
The division bench while rendering the judgment under review in paras 13 and 15 was considered today and the contentions of the petitioners regarding the casual assignees and further recorded that the affidavit filed by the respondents in compliance to order dated 1st October, 2024, mentions the details of 18 persons working pursuant to the court orders.
The number corresponds to the information brought on record by the petitioners through the medium of information obtained under Right to Information Act, it said.
After having gone through the contents of the review petition, the bench found that the petitioners intend to re-agitate the issues which stand already considered and decided by this court.
The court ordered “the issue as to whether this court has correctly interpreted the stand of either of the parties cannot be a subject matter of review”.
Support for this position was found by the bench in the Supreme Court of India’s decision in Malleeswari versus K. Suguna and another, 2025.
The bench of Justices Oswal and Wani held “to wit, through a review application, an apparent error of fact or law is intimated to the court, but no extra reasoning is undertaken to explain the said error. The intimation of error at the first blush enables the court to correct apparent errors instead of the higher court correcting such errors. At both the above stages, detailed reasoning is not warranted”.
Having noticed the distinction between the power of review and appellate power, the judges restated the power and scope of review jurisdiction.
They did not find any error apparent on the face of record which would warrant exercise of jurisdiction of review by the court. The review petition was, accordingly, dismissed.
