MT DEOKALI KUARI Vs. MAHADEO PRASAD BHAGAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner in this civil revision is the widow of the late Babu Ganga Prasad Bhagat. She is plaintiff in a suit to cancel a deed of family settlement executed on 19 November 1934, between herself and her husband's brother, on the allegation that she was induced to sign it by fraud and misrepresentation. There is a prayer to send a copy of the decree to the registration office for a note being made that the document had been cancelled. The plaintiff's case is that her husband was separate from his brother and on his death she got possession of his entire estate as his widow and heir; but the recitals in the document are on the footing that the brothers were joint and the plaintiff on her husband's death was entitled to maintenance in lieu of which she was given properties worth Rs. 20,000. At the time of the institution of the suit, she paid Rs. 15 ag court-fee treating it as a declaratory suit but she was directed to value the relief and she valued it at rupees 5100 on which amount we are told that court-fee has been paid. The defendant objected that the valuation of the suit should be not less than Rs. 20,000 and the Subordinate Judge after taking evidence held that the suit should be valued on the basis of the market value of the properties involved which he found to be Rs. 41,000 and odd. He rejected the contention of the plaintiff that in the present suit the plaintiff is in possession of the properties and she is only bound to value the suit according to the injury or loss which she apprehends she will have to suffer if the document be left standing.

(2.) The learned Subordinate Judge directed the plaintiff to pay the deficit court, fee on Rs. 41,525, and against that order, the plaintiff has come in revision to this Court. We have no doubt that the proper method of valuing the suit is according to the injury or loss from which the plaintiff seeks to be protected, and that loss cannot be valued as the Subordinate Judge has valued it at the total value of the properties in suit; such a value would be proper if the plaintiff was out of possession of the properties or if the document denied her any right and title whatsoever and she had to come to Court to change her position from that of a person enjoying no rights to that of a person enjoying the full right. But here the document gives her considerable rights and she comes for something better. It is then for the plaintiff in the first instance to put a valuation on the relief claimed. If this valuation is not wholly unreasonable or arbitrary, the Court will prima facie be disposed Ho accept it though there is, as the learned Subordinate Judge has pointed out, ample authority for the Court to interfere, should the plaintiff's valuation be wholly arbitrary and unreasonable.

(3.) In the present case, the valuation placed on the relief by the plaintiff does not seem to us to be at all unreasonable or arbitrary and we think this is a case in which the Subordinate Judge should not have interfered with. In my view the Court below should have accepted the valuation of Rs. 5100 placed upon the suit by the plaintiff. I would allow the application with costs one gold mohur against the, contesting respondent. There will be no costs against the Advocate-General. Mohammad Noor J.