10/12/2019 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly applicable law for each and every kind of ICC/IP controversy even against an opposing non ICC/IP. He concludes that under Section 66 of the IPRA, the jurisdiction of the NCIP is limited, and confined only to cases involving rights of IPs/ICCs, where both such parties belong to the same ICC/IP group. Justice Leonen is of the view that the jurisdiction of the NCIP is limited to disputes where both parties are members of ICC/IP group and come from the same ethnolinguistic group. He states that the requirements for the proper exercise of the NCIP's jurisdiction over a dispute, pursuant to Section 66 of the IPRA, are as follows: (1) the claim or dispute must involve the rights of ICCs/IPs; (2) both parties must belong to the same ICC/IP group; (3) these parties must have exhausted remedies under their ICC/IP's customary laws; and (4) compliance with this requirement of exhausting remedies under customary laws must be evidenced by a certification issued by the Council of Elders/Leaders who participated in the attempt to settle the dispute, to the effect that the dispute has not been resolved. Meanwhile, in Lim v. Gamosa,[18] which was penned by Justic Perez, the Court held that the limited jurisdiction of the NCIP is at best concurrent with that of the regular trial courts: As previously adverted to, we are not unaware of The City Government of Baguio City, et al. v. Atty. Masweng, et al. and similar cases where we made an implicit affirmation of the NCIP's jurisdiction over cases where one of the parties are non-ICCs/IPs. Such holding, however, and all the succeeding exercises of jurisdiction by the NCIP, cannot tie our hands and declare a grant of primary and/or original jurisdiction, where there is no such explicit conferment by the IPRA. At best, the limited jurisdiction of the NCIP is concurrent with that of the regular trial courts in the exercise of the latter's general jurisdiction extending to all controversies brought before them within the legal bounds of rights and remedies.[19] Guided by the foregoing ruling, the Court held in Begnaen v. Spouses Caligtan[20] that the NCIP-Regional Hearing Office (RHO), being the agency that first took cognizance of petitioner-appellant's complaint, has jurisdiction over the same to the exclusion of the MCTC. In said case where both parties are members of the same ICC and the subject of their dispute was an ancestral land, petitioner-appellant first invoked the NCIP's jurisdiction by filing with the RHO his complaint against respondents for "Land Dispute and Enforcement of Rights." When the RHO dismissed the complaint without prejudice for his failure to first bring the matter for settlement before the Council of Elders as mandated by the IPRA, petitioner-appellant filed instead a complaint for forcible entry before the MCTC. Aside from its ruling that th NCIP has excluded the MCTC of its jurisdiction over the same subject matter the Court said that petitioner is estopped from belatedly impugning the jurisdiction of the NCIP-RHO after initiating a complaint before it and receiving ail adverse ruling. Based on the diverse views on the nature and scope of the NCIP's jurisdiction over claims and disputes involving the rights of ICCs/IPs, the recent jurisprudence[21] on the matter, as well as petitioners' arguments in their motions for reconsideration, the Court elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/63044 6/32