SRI RAJAH RAVU VENKATA MAHIPATHI GANGADHARA RAMA RAO BAHADUR GARU, YUVARAJAH OF PITHAPURAM AND ANR. Vs. THE PROVINCE OF MADRAS REPRESENTED BY THE COLLECTOR OF EAST GODAVARI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the plaintiffs from an order of the Subordinate Judge of Amalapuram holding that the suit which was tried by the District Munsiff of Razole was beyond his pecuniary jurisdiction and directing the plaint to be returned for presentation to the proper Court. The Province of Madras which was the defendant in the suit raised an objection to the valuation of the suit and contended that the plaintiffs under -valued the properties. The District Munsiff held on this issue that the suit was properly valued and was within the pecuniary jurisdiction of his Court. He decided the merits of the suit in favour of the plaintiffs, and granted the declaration and injunction sought. On appeal the Subordinate Judge came to the conclusion on the question of jurisdiction that the suit was undervalued and without going into the merits of the other issues raised in the suit he directed the return of the plaint to the proper Court as stated already. He refrained from deciding the other issues deliberately and not inadvertently; he states in paragraph 13 of his judgment,

(2.) THE plaintiffs urge that as the Subordinate Judge has not found, as required by Section 11(b) of the Suits Valuation Act that the under -valuation has prejudicially affected the disposal of the suit on the merits, he had no right to entertain the plea of jurisdiction and act upon it by directing that the plaint should be presented to the proper Court. There can be no doubt that the sub -clause referred to does lay down the condition that the appellate Court must be satisfied, for reasons to be recorded by it in writing that the under -valuation has prejudicially affected the disposal of the suit on the merits. In the absence of such a finding, it is not open to the appellate Court to decline to hear the appeal merely because the suit was under -valued. This is what Section 11 says in unmistakable terms. When this difficulty was pointed out to the learned Subordinate Judge, he got over it by stating that the objection to jurisdiction had been taken at the earliest stage and that the finding given by the lower Court about the value of the property was patently against the facts. But neither of these grounds is sufficient to support the order made by him. If the objection had not been taken at the earliest possible opportunity, it could never have been entertained at all. The fact that it was so taken does not mean that the other condition required by the section can be overlooked. The fact that the District Munsiff erred in thinking that the lands were waste lands while really they were cultivable lands and thus arrived at a wrong conclusion on their value means nothing more than that we have a decision before us in which the under -valuation of the properties of the plaintiffs was wrongly held to be correct. In other words, it is a decision which appertains to the issue as to jurisdiction. The section, however, requires something more, namely, that there must not only be a defect of jurisdiction by reason of an under -valuation but also a disposal of the suit on the merits which has been prejudicially affected by such an under -valuation. The Subordinate Judge has not considered the question whether there has been any such disposal and he had no right on the materials placed before him to hold straightaway that as there was an under -valuation the plaintiffs must go to another Court.

(3.) WHAT is not to be regarded as a prejudicial disposal has been considered in several cases. One of them is found in a Full Bench decision of our High Court in Kelu Achan v. : (1923)45MLJ135 , where the argument was that because of the under -valuation the party had been deprived of the privilege of a trial before a Subordinate Judge from whose decision an appeal would lie on the facts to the High Court. The learned Judges who delivered the opinion of the Full Bench point out that this is not the kind of prejudicial disposal contemplated by Sub -clause (b). The learned Government Pleader drew my attention to the decision of Kumaraswami Sastri,J., in Tirumal Rao v. Subramania, A.I.R. 1920 Mad. 843, but this is hardly of any help. In dealing with a civil revision petition, the learned Judge accepted the finding that there was an under -valuation and held that the District Munsiff had failed to determine certain questions and wrongly decided certain others and set aside the decree and directed the return of the plaint so that it might be presented to the proper Court. So far as I am able to see, it did not decide how the wrong decision of the Munsiff on the merits could be said to have had anything to do with the under -valuation of the suit. The necessity for the inter -relation of the two things which is required to be established by the statute was not borne in mind by the learned judge, if I may say so with great respect. Moreover, that case is of no help in the present case because as stated already the learned Subordinate Judge has not even held that the decision of the Munsiff on the merits was in any way wrong. He did not go into the questions at all as he thought that the matter should be dealt with by the Court to which the plaint must be presented.