RANGA PAI Vs. BABA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case objection is taken by the respondents' vakil to the amount of the Court-fee stamp affixed by the appellants to their petition of appeal. In our opinion the objection taken at the hearing of the appeal cannot be entertained. The mode in which any question as to the amount of any fee payable in the High Court should be determined is prescribed in Chapter II of the Court Fees Act, The 5th Section provides that any such question arising between the officer whose duty it is to see that any fee is paid and any suitor or attorney shall be referred to the taxing officer whose decision shall be final, except in cases of a reference being made by him to the Chief Justice when the decision of the Chief Justice shall be final. In the present instance there was no reference to the Chief Justice. It is suggested that the provision as to the finality of the taxing officer's decision is intended to apply only as between the appellant and the officer mentioned in the Section and that it does not prevent a respondent from questioning the decision. If this were the right construction of the Section with reference to the taxing officer's decision, it must also hold good with regard to the decision of the Chief Justice. Neither decision can, in this view, be regarded as final except as regards the party who has filed the petition of appeal or other document. We can find nothing in the language of the Section to justify this conclusion. Had it been intended to give finality of such a restricted kind to either decision, the term 'suitor' would not have been used. We must hold, therefore, that the taxing officer's decision cannot be questioned by the respondents' vakil. The cases to which we were referred are not really in point, for the Act makes a distinction between the High Court and other Courts and in those cases it was not in the High Court that the appeal out of which the dispute regarding the stamp arose had to be filed.

(2.) The appeal is against so much of the decree of the District Judge as dismisses the plaintiffs' suit, and objection is taken by the respondents to the remaining part of the decree which is in favour of the plaintiffs.

(3.) It will be convenient to deal first with the point of limitation raised by the respondents in answer to the whole suit. The plaintiffs' claim is of a twofold character. There is first the charge of breach of trust against the respondents and a prayer for an account, and secondly the allegation "that the defendants behave independently of the plaintiffs in respect of temple affairs" and a prayer for an injunction restraining the defendants from conducting the temple affairs without the co-operation of the plaintiffs. With regard to this latter head of claim the plaint is unfortunately vague, and no date is assigned to the alleged exclusion of the plaintiffs. In their written statement the defendants allege that the plaintiffs "have been refused all interference in the temple affairs and its management" since 1876, and on this they found their plea of limitation.