MANTRALA SIMHADRI Vs. PALLI VARALAKSHMI AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question that arises in this revision case is solely one of law, as the material facts are not in controversy.

(2.) The petitioner sued for the recovery of a sum of Rs. 499/- being the amount of the debt borrowed by the defendants from him on the 6th of September, 1951. He relied upon a payment made on the 1st of September, 1954 as saving the debt from the bar of limitation. The plaintiff produced in the lower Court, Ex. A-1, a promissory note executed by the defendants in his favour, on the reverse side of which there is an endorsement of payment. The lower Court dismissed the suit holding that the promissory note not having been sufficiently stamped, the suit laid on the foot of that note, was not maintainable.

(3.) Mr. Poornaiah, learned counsel for the petitioner, has contended that the promissory note having been admitted in evidence, Section 36 of the Stamp Act prohibited the rejection of the document at a subsequent stage of the suit. In this contention he is supported by the decision of Mr. Justice Viswanatha Sastry in Basavayya Naidu v. Venkateswarlu, 1956 Andh WR 490 : A.I.R. 1957 Andhra Pradesh 1022. He has alternatively contended that the endorsement of payment evidenced by Ex. A-1 constitutes an acknowledgment of the original debt and the suit having been laid on the basis of the anterior indebtedness, it should have been decreed. Mr. E. Venkatesam, learned counsel for the respondents, has however contended that the admission of Ex. A-1 did not satisfy the requirements of Section 36 of the Stamp Act inasmuch as there was no decision on contest when the endorsement of admission was made on the promissory note, that it was a mere mechanical act and that therefore the view taken by the lower Court was correct.