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Judgment
Viswanatha Sastri, J.—The plaintiff is the appellant in this second appeal, preferred against the decree of the Agent to the Government of Madras, West Godavari, dismissing his suit for a declaration that the decree obtained against him by the present defendant 1 in O. S. No. 13 of 1939 on the file of the Agency Munsif, Polavaram, was vitiated by fraud and was also passed by a Court without jurisdiction. The facts are shortly these.
The present defendant 1 was the plaintiff in O.S. No. 13 of 1939 on the file of the Agency Munsif, Polavaram. The suit was to recover a sum of Rs. 285/- from the present defendant 3 representing one year''s rent of certain lands or damages for use and occupation of the lands for one year. Pending the suit, two petitions for amendment of the plaint were filed. In the first of the petitions, a prayer for eviction of the present defendant 3 was also added.
In the second petition, the present plaintiff as well as the present defendant 2 were sought to be added as parties because they were in possession of portions of the suit land along with the present defendant 3. The petition for amendment was allowed and the parties who were sought to be impleaded, were added as defendants to that suit, the present plaintiff being added as defendant 2. The suit was decreed ex parte against the defendants. The present suit was brought by the plaintiff, defendant 2 in the previous suit for a declaration that the decree passed therein was null and void.
The learned advocate for the appellant raised two points in this second appeal: (1) that the addition of the present plaintiff as defendant 2 in O.S. No. 13 of 1939 by the Agency Munsif, Polavaram was without jurisdiction; and (2) that the plaint in the previous suit had been amended in such a manner as to take the suit out of the jurisdiction of the Agency Munsif. It is convenient to deal with these points separately.
It was argued that R. 14 cl. (e) of the Agency Rules which empowered the Court to allow any party to alter or amend his pleadings, did not cover the addition of new parties to the suit either as plaintiffs or as defendants. It is true that among the Agency Rules, there is no rule under which fresh parties could be added to the suit either as plaintiffs or as defendants. The Agency Rules provide a set of simple and elementary rules for the guidance of Officers empowered to try suits in the Agency tracts with the view of avoiding multiplicity of suits and appeals.
In my opinion, R. 14 (e) of the Agency Rules empowering the Court to allow an amendment of the pleadings confers by necessary implication, the power to add new parties whose presence before the Court is necessitated by the grant of the amendment. In this case the addition of the parties is an inevitable and necessary consequence of the amendment of the plaint allowed by the Agency Munsif. I, therefore, hold that there is no substance in the contention that the proceedings in O. S. No. 13 of 1939 in so far as they effected the parties who were subsequently impleaded as defendants to the suit, were without jurisdiction.
The lands of which possession was sought to be recovered by the plaintiff in O. S. No. 13 of 1939 yielded an annual income of Rs. 285/- according to the plaint in that suit. When the plaint was allowed to be amended by the inclusion of a prayer for recovery of possession, the valuation of the suit for possession should have been fixed at 15 times the annual income. The suit was originally valued at Rs. 300/- consisting of Rs. 285/- claimed as rent or damages for use and occupation and Rs. 15/- as interest thereon and a court-fee of Rs. 33-11-0 was paid thereon.
After the amendment of the plaint by the inclusion of a prayer for recovery of possession, the valuation in the plaint continued to remain at Rs. 300/-. If the prayer for recovery of possession had been valued, the proper valuation of the suit would have been Rs. 4275/- for the relief of possession and Rs. 300/- for the relief of rent or damages for use and occupation. If the valuation had been revised as required by law, the Agency Munsif, Polavaram would not have had pecuniary jurisdiction to try the suit.
The valuation of the plain: was, however, not revised and continued to remain as before at the figure of Rs. 300/-, and the Agency Munsif tried and decreed the suit without any objection being raised to his jurisdiction. It is argued that since the prayer for recovery of possession was not at all valued by the plaintiff in O. S. No. 13 of 1939, there was no question of under-valuation or over-valuation of the suit so as to attract the provisions of S. 11, Suits Valuation Act.
Consequently, the want of jurisdiction in the Agency Munsif to try the suit was not cured by that statutory provision and his decree must be held to he one passed without jurisdiction. There is no substance in this contention. The plaint contained a valuation of Rs. 300/- which was far below the valuation which the plaintiff in that suit was, in law, bound to fix and which if he had fixed, would have taken the suit out of the jurisdiction of the Agency Munsif, Polavaram.
The pecuniary jurisdiction of the Agency Munsif, Polavaram was only Rs. 500/- and though he had jurisdiction to fry suits for recovery of possession of lands and for money within the limit of Rs. 500/-, he could not have tried O. S. No. 13 of 1939 on the plaint as amended, if it had been valued according to law. The learned advocate for the appellant relied upon the well-established principle of law that neither consent nor waiver by a party to a suit can confer jurisdiction upon a Court which has no inherent jurisdiction and that jurisdiction ever the subject matter of a suit can be given only by law.
The proposition is so well-established that I need not refer to the decisions cited on behalf of the appellant. There are, however, statutory exceptions to this general rule enacted in S. 21, Civil P. C. and S. 11, Suits Valuation Act. Section 11, Suits Valuation Act enacts that a party who has not taken objection as to the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Court at the time specified in cl. (a) of sub-s. (1), cannot be allowed to dispute that jurisdiction afterwards.
The object of the Legislature is that the defect of pecuniary jurisdiction in a Court which would otherwise have jurisdiction to try a suit, should not render the proceedings null and void if such objection was not taken at the earliest opportunity and there has been no consequent failure of justice. If the party concerned had joined issue and gone to trial of the suit without raising objection to the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Court at the earliest opportunity, the decree passed by the Court would be binding upon him.
Though S. 11, Suits Valuation Act in terms disallows objections to pecuniary jurisdiction on the ground of over-valuation or under-valuation to be taken up in appeal, the principle is of general application and if the decree cannot be impeached in appeal on the ground of over-valuation or under valuation of the suit, it necessarily follows that it could not be attacked in a collateral proceedings by, way of a suit to set it aside.
The effect of S. 11, Suits Valuation Act is that the objection to the pecuniary jurisdiction is cured entirely and for all purposes and not merely for the purpose of the proceedings in the Appellate Court I do not consider it necessary to refer to the decisions of the various High Courts on this point in view of the authoritative pronouncement of the Supreme Court in Kiran Singh and Others Vs. Chaman Paswan and Others,
The relevant passage is as follows:
The question, therefore, is, can a decree passed on appeal by a Court which had jurisdiction to entertain it only by reason of under-valuation, be set aside on the ground that on a true valuation that Court was not competent to entertain the appeal? Three High Courts have considered the matter in Full Benches and have come to the conclusion that mere change of forum is not a prejudice within the meaning of S. 11, Suits Valuation Act. Vide ''Kelu Achan v. Cheriya Parvathi Nethiar'', 46 Mad 631: (AIR 1924 Mod 6) (FB) (B), '' Mool Chand Moti Lal Vs. Ram Kishan and Others and Ramdeo Singh and Others Vs. Raj Narain Singh and Another, In our judgment, the opinion expressed in these decisions is correct.
Though the decision of the Supreme Court rested on an interpretation of the language of s. 11, Suits Valuation Act and not on any general principle of law and was concerned with the proper forum of appeal in a suit which had been under-valued, the following observation in the judgment shows that the principle is one of wider application. Referring to S. 11, Suits Valuation Act, the Supreme Court observed:
It is a self-contained provision complete in itself, and no objection to jurisdiction based on over-valuation or under-valuation can be raised otherwise than in accordance with it......... The policy underlying Ss. 21 and 99, Civil P. C. and S. 11, Suits Valuation Act is the same namely, that when a case had been tried by a Court on the merits and judgment rendered it should not be liable to be reversed purely on technical grounds, unless it had resulted in failure of justice, and the policy of the Legislature has been to treat objections to jurisdiction both territorial and pecuniary as technical and not open to consideration by an appellate Court, unless there has been a prejudice on the merits. The contention of the appellants, therefore, that the decree and judgment of the District Court, Monghyr, should be treated as a nullity cannot be sustained under S. 11, Suits Valuation Act.
I am therefore of the opinion that though the former suit was beyond the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Agency Munsif who tried it, the defect amounted to a mere irregularity in the exercise of jurisdiction and the decree passed in that suit could not be impugned as one passed without jurisdiction in a subsequent suit.
If authority is required for the position that a decree cannot be impeached collaterally on the ground of want of pecuniary jurisdiction in the Court which passed it, it will be found in the decisions in '' Katamberi Chuzhali Bhagavati Amma''s owner, Uralan and Manager Samanthan Karakkattitathil Kammaran Nambiar (since deceased) and Another Vs. Valia Ramunni, Karnavan and Manager now the Santikkaran of Parachinikkatavath Mattappurakkal Muthappan Deity, styled as "Matayan" and Others, and Lalji Saheb through Bankey Behari Lal Vs. Munshi Lal Babu and Others,
For these reasons, I am of the opinion that this second appeal fails and must be dismissed with costs.