Jain Shwetambar Tirth Antriksha Parshwanath

Author(s): Antriksha Parshwanath Sansthan Shirpur
Publisher: Antriksha Parshwanath Sansthan

Page 93

failed to impress the court, the issue there, at the end of the day, resolved itself into the question whether the Subordinate Judge was wrong in refusing to grant to the Swetambaris a declaration of their exclusive right of management. Counsel for the Digambaris final contending only far the retention of the joint management as decreed by the Subordinate Judge. In the result the Appellate Court declared and held that the Swetambaris were, on the facts found, entitled to the exclusive management of the temple, and that the plea of estoppel set up by the written statement had no reference to that position.
The conclusions of the Courtare embodied in its decree of the Ist October, 1923 It is from that decree that the present appeal is brought.
On full consideration of the whole case their Lordships have reached to the conclusion that to the decree is right.
The plea of estoppel contained in the written statement is perfectly general in its terms, and the defendants, when asked, refused to give any particulars of its meaning. In the absence of such particulars, it seems to their Lordships impossibe for the appellants to contend with success that it was thereby intended to set up against the plaintiffs' claim to exclusive management an estoppel which would at once be fatal to the same claim then being substantively put forward by themselves.
But the question is not only one of form or of pleading. It is also one of substance The appellant's case forcibly presented to the Board was that the facts found by the learned Trial Judge imported and agreement between the two sects as definite and permanent in the matter of joint management, as the time-table in the matter of worship was now admitted to be. No such agreement, however, is pleaded even in the alternative. No issue with regard to it was directed. No such issue could have been directed as the existence of such an agreement was entirly contrary to the only pleaded case either of the plaintiffs or of the defendants. Moreover the evidence taken was not
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