Question

Under the scheme of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, where proceedings are pending before a competent civil court, and an application is made seeking transfer of the case from one district to another district within the state, such transfer may be ordered:

• A. Only upon agreement between the parties.
• B. By the High Court.
• C. Only after conclusion of trial.
• D. Only by the court in which the suit is pending.

Hint:

Section 24 CPC: High Court = State-wide transfer power. If you need to move a case across district lines, the High Court is the competent authority to make it happen!

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Civil courts in India are organised district by district, and each District Court's writ effectively stops at its own district boundary. That is precisely why the drafters of the Code of Civil Procedure could not leave inter-district transfer power with the trial court itself or with the district judge of either district alone, someone had to sit above the whole state's court system to move a case across that boundary without dispute. The High Court occupies exactly that position, exercising superintendence over every civil court in the state, so Section 24 places the power to transfer a suit from one district to another squarely with it.

This also explains why the other possibilities in the question do not hold up. Requiring the consent of both parties would let a reluctant litigant simply block a transfer that is otherwise justified, for instance where a fair trial is genuinely at risk, so the law does not make agreement a condition. Insisting that transfer wait until the trial is over would be self-defeating, since most transfer applications exist precisely to correct a problem, such as bias or inconvenience, while the case is still live, so the "at any stage" language of Section 24 rules that out too. And the court currently seized of the suit obviously cannot promote itself to decide matters outside its own district, since that would mean a district court dictating to another district court, something the hierarchy of civil courts does not permit.

Once these possibilities are set aside, what remains is the High Court's recognised power under Section 24(1) to move a suit, appeal, or other proceeding from a subordinate court in one district to a subordinate court in another, so long as the receiving court is competent to try it.
\[ \boxed{\text{By the High Court.}} \]

Answer 2

Beyond the plain words of Section 24 of the CPC, the answer to this question can also be reached by asking a structural question, which court in the state's judicial hierarchy has administrative and supervisory control over civil courts spread across more than one district. Running each option through that lens confirms the same conclusion.

1. Option (A): An agreement between the parties has no formal place in the transfer mechanism of the CPC. Even where both sides want a transfer, it is the competent court, not private consent, that legally effects it, so this cannot be the answer.
2. Option (B): Every civil court within a state, whatever district it sits in, is ultimately subject to the superintendence of that state's High Court under the constitutional and administrative scheme governing the judiciary, and Section 24 of the CPC gives concrete procedural shape to that supervisory authority by letting the High Court transfer proceedings between subordinate courts in different districts. Because the High Court is the one authority whose jurisdiction spans every district of the state, it is the natural and correct repository of this power.
3. Option (C): Confining the power to the post-trial stage would mean the transfer mechanism could never be used to prevent the very unfairness, such as an apprehension of bias in a particular locality, that it is designed to guard against while the case is still being tried. Section 24 imposes no such restriction, so this option fails.
4. Option (D): A trial court's authority is territorially confined to its own district; it has no supervisory reach into another district's courts and therefore cannot direct a case to move there. Only a court sitting above the district-level hierarchy can do so, which again points away from this option.

Viewed structurally, only the High Court has both the territorial reach across all districts of the state and the statutory power under Section 24 to order such a transfer.

Therefore, the correct answer is By the High Court.