PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 27
jurisdiction of the Federal Court under Section 205 is a very limited jurisdiction. It is confined in the first place only to those cases in which the issue involved is the interpretation of the Constitution, that is to say, the interpretation of the Government of India Act, 1935.
Secondly, this limited jurisdiction accrues to the Federal Court, only if the High Court, after deciding a case before it gives a certificate to the effect that a question regarding the interpretation of the Constitution is involved,
It is only when these two conditions are satisfied, namely, that there exists an issue relating to the interpretation of the Constitution : and secondly, when the High Court has given a certificate that an appeal can go to the Federal Court under section 205.
The result of this limitation is this. All other appeals from the High Court in which questions relating to the interpretation of laws, other than the Constitution or those in which the interpretation of the Constitution is involved but where the High Court has not given a certificate, go directly to the Privy Council without the intervention of the Federal Court.
The object of this Bill is to prevent direct passage of appeals from the High Court to the Privy Council. In other words, the aim of the Bill is to make it compulsory that all civil appeals which arise from the judgment or decree of the High Court shall in the first instance go to the Federal Court.
The method adopted by the Bill to achieve this object is as follows :
What the Bill first does is to fix a day, which is the first of February, and which in the Bill is called “the appointed day”. The next thing that the Bill does is after the appointed day no appeals shall go to the Privy Council directly from the High court unless and until the appeal falls in a category of what is called “a pending appeal”. If an appeal on the first day of February can be described within the terms of this Bill as “a pending appeal” then the appeal shall