Allsop, J.:— This is an application under section 22 of the Code of Civil Procedure requesting that we should determine that a suit which is pending in the court of the Civil Judge of Saharanpur should proceed in the corresponding court having jurisdiction at Amritsar in the Punjab. The suit was instituted by the plaintiffs in order to obtain possession of two properties, one, which is by far the more valuable, situated in the town of Amritsar in the Punjab and the other situated in the town of Hardwar in the district of Saharanpur. The allegation made by the plaintiffs was that both properties originally belonged to one Badri Das who died in the year 1870 leaving him surviving two daughters, Jwala Devi who died in the year 1901 and Prem Devi who died in the year 1926. The plaintiffs alleged that they or some of them were entitled to the property on the death of Prem Devi as the collaterals of Badri Das. It appears from the affidavits that Jwala Devi made a will in favour of one Amar Nath whom she described as her adopted son, that there was a dispute about the property between Amar Nath and Prem Devi and that this dispute was, referred to arbitration with the result that the major part of the property went to Amar Nath and the remainder to Prem Devi. Thereafter Amar Nath sold the property in Amritsar to Nathu Mal Jairam Das, who converted it into a building site and transferred various plots to various persons who are defendants in the suit. The property in Hardwar was transferred by Prem Devi to some of the other defendants or to their predecessors-in-interest The plaintiffs claimed only their own share in the properties and admitted that other shares could belong, if their allegations were true, to sixteen other persons who were impleaded pro forma. Three of the defendants were said to be in possession of the property in Hardwar and the remaining two hundred and thirty-five in possession of the property in Amritsar. It is some of these last named defendants who are the applicants before us and their application has been supported by others who hold parts of the property at Amritsar.

After we had heard arguments for some time it appeared to us that it was doubtful whether the provisions of section 22 of the Code of Civil Procedure applied to the case. These provisions could apply only if the suit, in its entirety, was cognizable by either of the two courts at Saharanpur and Amritsar. It is true that the application was based on the assumption that either court would have jurisdiction and that the opposite party accepted the assumption, but we felt that we could not pass a positive order that the suit should proceed in either court unless we were satisfied that court would have jurisdiction to deal with the whole suit. The result was that we adjourned the arguments to enable counsel on both sides to consider this aspect of the matter.

When arguments were resumed learned counsel for the applicants agreed that our doubt was justified but learned counsel for the opposite party, that is the plaintiffs, urged that his clients were entitled, as of right, to implead all the defendants in the same suit under the provisions of order I, rule 3 of the first schedule of the Code of Civil Procedure and that once all the defendants had been impleaded either of the courts at Saharanpur and Amritsar had jurisdiction under the provisions of section 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure because the property claimed was situated partly within the local limits of the jurisdiction of one court and partly within the local limits of the jurisdiction of the other court.

I may say at once that I do not consider that the provisions, of order I, rule 3 apply because I am not satisfied that the right to relief against all the defendants' arises out of the same series of acts or transactions within the meaning of that rule, but before pursuing the matter further I should like to make some observations about the provisions dealing with the joinder of causes of action the joinder of defendants and the local jurisdiction of courts.

The provisions for the joinder of different causes of action against the same defendant or the same defendants are to be found in order II, rule 3. They allow a plaintiff, save as otherwise provided, to unite in the same suit several causes of action against the same defendant or the same defendants jointly. They are subject to the provisions of rule 6 which allow the court to order separate trials where it appears that causes of action joined in one suit cannot be conveniently tried or disposed of together and, in my judgment, they are subject also to the condition that the court has jurisdiction in respect of all the causes of action involved. It is manifest that the Code of Civil Procedure was framed in its present form, namely in the form of an Act with schedules attached so as to give greater elasticity to the rules of procedure. The main body of the Act sets forth the fundamental principles which are variable only by the legislature itself. The rules in the first schedule deal with matters of detail which are variable at the instance of the various High Courts with the previous approval of certain other authorities. It is specifically laid down that variations in the rules shall not be inconsistent with the body of the Code and it seems to me that it is a reasonable inference that the legislature when it first made the rules in the first schedule intended that those rules should themselves not be inconsistent with the body of the Code. It follows that no rule in the schedule can confer upon any court a jurisdiction which it would not have under the provisions in the body of the Code which confer upon such jurisdiction.

The provisions of order I, rule 3 of the first schedule are that “All persons, may be joined as defendants against whom any right to relief in respect of or arising out of the same act or transaction or series of acts or transactions is alleged to exist, whether jointly, severally or in the alternative, where if separate suits were brought against such persons any common question of law or fact would arise”. It has been suggested that this rule enables a plaintiff, as of right, to join various causes of action against different defendants in the same suit. I doubt whether that was the intention. In the first place, order I contains no provision corresponding with that in order II, rule 6 and consequently, if the contention was right, no court would have any power to prevent any inconvenience which might arise out of a joint trial. In the second place, in order that the provisions of the rule should be applicable it is necessary that the right to relief should arise out of the same act or transaction or series of acts or transactions and this implies, in my judgment that the acts or transactions, where they are different, should be so connected as to constitute a single series which could fairly be described as one entity or fact which would constitute a cause of action against all the defendants jointly. Whether this necessary condition exists in any particular case would, of course, depend upon the nature of the case but I am satisfied that this at least is necessary that the case should be such that it could be said that the court in which the suit was instituted had local jurisdiction in the first instance to deal with the controversies arising between the plaintiffs and each of the defendants. This proposition is supported by the decision of the learned Judges of the Calcutta High Court in the case of Bengal and North Western Railway Co. Ltd. v. Sadaram Bhairodan(1).

In this connection it is necessary to consider the provisions of section 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In suits which arise out of disputes about immovable property the jurisdictions of courts depend upon the situation of the property itself. A difficulty would naturally arise if there was a dispute about some immovable property which was situated partly within one jurisdiction and partly within another. The provisions of section 17 are, in my judgment, intended to solve this difficulty, but before the provisions come into play there must be one property which is situated in different jurisdictions. The property must, in the particular circumstances of the suit, be capable of being described as a single entity. Whether it can or cannot be so described will depend again upon the nature of the dispute between the parties. If there is a dispute, for instance, about single estate which both parties are claiming as a whole that estate is obviously for the purposes of that particular suit a single entity. If, on the other hand, the owner of an estate has a claim against unconnected trespassers who have trespassed upon different parts of the estate or different properties situated within it, those parts or those properties would not for the purposes of the dispute between him and the trespassers be one entity but several entities and the provisions of section 17 would not apply.

Having made these observations I must now return to the question whether in the suit with which we are dealing it can be said that the relief claimed against the defendants in possession of the property at Hardwar and the defendants in possession of the property at Amritsar arises out of the same series of acts or transactions and whether the two properties claimed can, for the purposes of section 17, be described as a single entity. It must be admitted that there is no apparent connection between the transfer of the Amritsar property to Amar Nath under the will executed by Jwala Devi and the subsequent transfers made by him and his successors-in-in-interest on the one hand and the transfer made by Prem Devi of the Hardwar property on the other hand. It must be admitted also that the plaintiffs are not claiming the estate of Badri Das as a whole against any rival claimant to the estate. They are claiming two properties against two sets of defendants whom they allege to be trespassers and who, if they are trespassers, have absolutely no connection with each other. The only connecting link is that the plaintiffs' claim in both the properties arose at the time of the death of Prem Devi and that the claim is based on the assumption that the defendants are in possession as the result of transfers made by limited owners who were entitled, during their lives, to the enjoyment of the whole estate and the properties comprised within it. It was held many years ago in the case of Musst. Jehan Bebee v. Saivuk Ram that unconnected transfers by a Hindu widow of properties comprised within the husband's estate did not give rise to one cause of action against the various transferees. The same rule was laid down in the case of Bindo Bibi v. Ram Chandra(2). In that case a reference was made to the decision in Murti v. Bhola Ram(3) and it was pointed out that was a case where a claim was made against one defendant who had taken possession of different properties in execution of one decree. There is no doubt that case is clearly distinguishable from the case with which we are dealing. Our attention has not been drawn to any case of this Court in which the decision in Jehan Bebee's case has been questioned. Our attention has been drawn to certain cases decided by other High Courts and by their Lordships of the Privy Council but none of them seems to me to justify the conclusion that the rule to which we have referred is no longer good law. The case of Nisar All Khan v. Mohammad Alt Khan supports; if anything, the conclusion to which I have come. In the case of Shyam Behari Mal v. Maha Prasad it was pointed out that in order that different defendants should be joined in the same suit the right to relief claimed against them should arise out of the same series of acts or transactions. In the case of Ralia Ram v. Mulk Raj the High Court of Lahore did hold that a single suit could be maintained against persons who had obtained property as a result of different alienation made by the father and uncles the plaintiff but there is nothing in the report to show that the alienations were unconnected with each other. It appears that there had been various mortgages and the land in suit had ultimately been sold and it is possible that various defendants were jointly concerned in some or other of these transactions. In that case a reference was made to the decision in Lala Rup Narain v. Gopal Devi(4) but their Lordships did not base their decision in that case upon the ground that there had been no misjoinder. They said that the objection about misjoinder could not be raised in appeal and although they expressed some doubt whether there had been a misjoinder it does not appear that there was any question of local jurisdiction involved. In the case of Govindaraja Mudaliar v. Alagappa Thambiran(5) the plaintiff, who had been appointed a trustee as the result of a suit under section 92 of the Code of Civil Procedure, was seeking to recover property from a number of transferees to whom the previous trustee had transferred it under leases for periods of ninety-nine years, the validity of these leases being in question. The learned Judges of the Madras High Court held that all the defendants could be impleaded in one suit, but here again there is no reason to suppose that the court in which the suit was instituted did not have local jurisdiction in respect of all the properties and it may further be mentioned that it is manifest that it was convenient that the question in issue should be decided once for all against all the defendants and that may have been a point that weighed with the learned Judges. In the case of Papamma v. Romaswami the defendants were impleaded as the result of a single mortgage. In the case of Bhimayya v. Lakshminarayana an adopted son was seeking to set aside a number of alienations which were effected by his adoptive mother and it was held that although the properties were within the jurisdictions of different courts ope suit could lie in one of these courts, but the judgment is a very short one and the matter was not considered in any detail so that I should hesitate to accept this decision as an authority. In the case of Ramendra Nath Roy v. Brajendra Nath Dass there was apparently no question of local jurisdiction involved and one of the learned Judges was a party to the subsequent case of Bengal and North Western Railway Co. Ltd. v. Sadaram Bhairodan where it was distinctly held that the provisions of order I, rule 3 could not confer local jurisdiction upon a court which would not otherwise have it.

I am satisfied that the court at Saharanpur has jurisdiction only to deal with the dispute about the Hardwar property and that the court at Amritsar has jurisdiction only to deal with the dispute about the Amritsar property. In these circumstances, the provisions of section 22 of the Code of Civil Procedure do not apply and I would, therefore, dismiss the application.

Verma, J.:— I agree. Suppose a sonless Hindu dies possessed of immovable property scattered all over India—at Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Allahabad, Patna, Dacca. Shillong, Calcutta, Madras and Bombay and is succeeded by his widow who, in the course of 40 or 50 years, transfers, on different dates, portions of the property situated at each of the places mentioned above, to different persons each of whom resides at the place where the property transferred to him is situated, and the transfers are wholly unconnected with, and independent of, one another. Upon the widow's death the reversioner wants to challenge these various transfers. Learned counsellor the plaintiffs has argued that in such a case the reversioner is entitled to bring one suit challenging all the transfers at any one of the places mentioned above, impleading all the transferees. I find it very difficult to hold that such a result is contemplated by the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure upon which reliance has been placed and which are mentioned in the judgment of my learned brother. I do not consider it necessary to pursue the matter any further. It is clear to my mind that, if the plaintiffs' argument mentioned above is accepted, startling results will follow.

By the Court:— The application is dismissed. In the circumstances of the case, we make no order for costs.