RAMKHELAWAN SAHU Vs. BIR SURENDRA SAHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These applications in revision have been heard together, because they involve the same point and have arisen out of litigation concerned with the same subject matter. The question involved in each is as to whether the plaints should bear a court-fee computed under Section 7, Clause (iv)(c), Court fees Act, or whether it should be computed under Clause (v) of the same Act. There is in each the further question whether this is a proper matter for the exercise of the revisional jurisdiction of the Court under Section 115, Civil P.C. The matter first come before a Single Judge, who referred it to a Division Bench on account of certain differences of opinion manifested in the decisions of this Court and for the solution of these difficulties this larger Bench has been constituted.

(2.) On the preliminary question as to whether the revisional jurisdiction of the Court can be invoked, the argument in opposition to the application is as follows. It is contended that the matter of the proper stamp-fee lies solely within the jurisdiction of the trial Court that the first Court is empowered to decide questions of law as well as questions of fact and that a revisional Court should not interfere with the decision of the final Court if it has exercised the powers within its jurisdiction. Furthermore, it is said that the plaintiff has a further remedy by way of appeal, because he may refuse to pay up the court-fee demanded of him and appeal against the decision rejecting the plaint. It has already been decided by this Court in Ram Bhusan Das V/s. Bachu Rai A.I.R.1934. Pat 641 that where the question is as to the particular category into which the suit falls, that is to say, whether the duty is payable upon the suit as belonging to a particular class, or whether another rate of duty is payable oh it as belonging to another class, the decision of the first Court is subject to revision, because the refusal to entertain the plaint and the suit, unless the duty demanded be paid, is a refusal to exercise jurisdiction.

(3.) In Harihar Prasad V/s. Gopal Saran ( A.I.R.1936. Pat 385 it was held that where jurisdiction originates in some special enactment, the construction of the enactment is always a matter for revision; as was said by Channel J. in Reg v. Manchester Justices 1899.1 Q.B. 671, at (page 575: It seems to me clear that a tribunal cannot give itself a jurisdiction which it has not got by taking an erroneous view of the law.