Vepery Kotilingam Mudaliar (dead) and Another vs The Board of Commissioners for Hindu Religious Endowments

Curgenven, J.—This is a Civil Revision Petition against an order of the District Judge of Nellore assessing the Court-Fee payable upon a

petition u/s 80(2) of the Hindu Religious Endowments Act and allowing the petitioners a fortnight within which to pay it. The respondent raises the

preliminary objection that an order of this nature is not subject to revision by this Court u/s 115 of Civil Procedure Code. It is indisputable that the

Court had jurisdiction to assess Court-fee u/s 12 of the Court-Fees Act, and it appears to me to involve a confusion of thought to say that because

an order which the Court had jurisdiction to pass resulted in the rejection of the application, therefore, assuming that the order was wrong it was

passed without jurisdiction. But it is unnecessary for me to pursue this question, which I have recently dealt with in C.R.P. No. 451 of 1926,

because I think that the petition must fail upon another ground. Section 115 requires that an order which it is sought to revise amounts to deciding a

case. Now if the ""case"" comprises no more than a direction to pay the Court-fee within a certain time, as it does it here, it is impossible without

anticipating what has not yet occurred, to say that the Court has refused to exercise its jurisdiction to entertain the petition. A different set of

consideration might arise if the Court, upon failure to make the payment, has dismissed the petition. It may then be arguable (as was held by

Oldfield, J. ) in Sudali Muthu Pillai v. Sndali Muthu Pillai (1922) 17 LW 623 that the order of dismissal (in that case an appeal) was a refusal to

exercise jurisdiction. The present case appears to be in all essential respects identical with that decided by Phillips, J., in Acha v. Sankaran and I

am in agreement with the view which 1 infer was his, that so far as matters have gone at present, no question of refusal to exercise jurisdiction has

arisen.

This Civil Revision Petition is accordingly dismissed with costs.