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TMI Blog1957 (5) TMI 52X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ed by the lower appellate Court. The appellants have now filed a second appeal in this court, and the question has arisen as to the sufficiency of the court-fee paid by the appellants on their second appeal and on the cross objection which they filed in the lower Court. It is only with the latter that we are now concerned. 3. The appellants paid a court-fee of Rs. 24 on their cross objection; the Taxing Officer is of opinion that the value of the subject-matter of the cross objection was Rs. 2,400 upon which a court-fee of Rs. 275-8-0 is payable, to which must be added Rs. 18/12/- as the court-fee on that part of the cross objection which seeks to have set aside the order directing that payment of future maintenance be charged on the appellants' property. To the payment of this latter sum no objection is taken 4. Now Section 7, Clause (ii) (a), of the Court-Fees Act reads thus : 7. The amount of fee payable under this Act in the suits next hereinafter mentioned shall be computed as follows; (ii) (a) In suits for maintenance and annuities or other sums payable periodically--According to the value of the subject-matter of the suit such value shall be deemed to be ten times the am ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... nly females and minors suing for their persona! maintenance should be given a concession in the matter of court-fee, and that accordingly the benefit of the proviso had to be confined to such persons. The Court was further of opinion that since the word 'suit' includes an appeal the expression 'by females and minors' must also refer to appeals filed by them . 7. With great respect to the learned Judges who decided Shankar Ojha's case (B), I think that the construction which Seth, J., gave to this proviso is to be preferred and that on further consideration the conclusion at which I arrived in Chief Inspector of stamps v. Ram Avadh Chowdhury (C), is erroneous. 8. In my opinion the phrase by females and minors in the first sentence of the proviso:-- Provided that in first appeal from decrees in suits for personal maintenance by females and minoRs..... must, as a matter of grammatical construction, refer to the persons who have instituted the suits and not to those who filed the appeals. I think that these words cannot be transposed and read as though they appeared in the proviso after the word 'appeal' without doing some violence to the language. The provi ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... to Section 7(ii)(a) of the Court-Fees Act, as amended by this State. 16. The facts, which have given rise to the question, are not in dispute. The respondent, a Hindu widow, filed a suit to recover arrears of maintenance. She also claimed future maintenance at the rate of Rs. 40/- per month and wanted it to be secured by a charge on some property in the hands of the appellants who are her deceased husband's brother and the two minor song of the latter. She valued the relief for future maintenance at Rs. 480/- under the proviso to Section 7, Court-Fees Act. 17. The trial Court awarded future maintenance at the rate of Rs. 20 per month only and also made the amount a charge on the appellant's property. Against that decree, the respondent preferred an appeal in which she claimed that the amount of her maintenance allowance be Increased to Rs. 40 per month as originally claimed. The appellants filed a cross objection in which they contended that the respondent was not entitled to maintenance at all. They valued the cross objection at Rs. 240, the amount payable for one year at the rate fixed by the trial Court. 18. The lower appellate Court dismissed both the appeal and the cr ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... amount claimed to be payable for one year . Section 2 of the Act provides that- . . . . unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context:-- (i) Appeal includes a cross objection (iv) Suit includes a first or second appeal from a decree in a suit and also a Letters Patent Appeal. 23. Two contentions have been pressed before us on behalf of the appellants. They are; 1. According to the definition clause, an appeal includes. 'A cross objection' and a suit includes 'a first appeal from a decree in a suit'. If, therefore we at first substitute the term 'a first appeal from a decree in a suit' in place of the word 'suit' in the proviso to Section 7 and then substitute the word 'cross objection' for the word 'appeal', the proviso will read like this :-- Provided that in a cross objection, against a decree in a suit for personal maintenance by females and minors, such value shall be deemed to be the amount claimed to be payable for one year. Irrespective of the person who filed the cross objection, the valuation of a cross objection if it is against a decree passed in a suit for personal maintenance' by females and minors must ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... pinion, necessary to bear in mind four considerations about which there cannot be much dispute, namely- 1. The general rule appears to be laid down in Section 7(ii)(A) itself according to which all suits for maintenance and annuities or other sums paid periodically have to be valued at ten times the claim for one year. 2. The proviso to the clause enacts an exception to the general rule. The proviso was added by Section 6 of U.P. Act No XIX of 1938 and the obvious intention with which it was enacted was to provide a cheaper, means to females and minors to claim their maintenance in certain cases. It in a way, provides a concession for females and minors who cannot be expected financially to be as well off as other persons. They are, therefore, allowed to value their claim at one-tenth of the figure at which it has to be valued, if it is filed by any other person. The concession is, however, subject to two conditions. The first condition is that the suit should be for personal maintenance and not for maintenance of any other kind. The second condition is that the suit should be instituted by females or minors. The concession was not intended to be available to any other kind of disa ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... atter may conclude with the decree of the trial Court. In that case, the subject-matter of dispute in the appeal will obviously not be the same as was that of the suit. In some cases, like a suit for account, it is permissible for the plaintiff to value the suit at one figure but when the defendant files his appeal, he may value his appeal, at a different figure vide Ghalib Rasul v. Mangilal AIR1949All382 . If, however, the Legislature has provided that the valuation of a suit or appeal must be made in a particular manner, it has to be made in that manner irrespective of the range of controversy, even if such a Valuation results in an anomaly. Such an anomaly was noticed in connection with appeal in redemption suits in Abdul Haq v. Shamshuddin AIR1941All357 and Kishen Lal v. B. Preduman Kishen Singh AIR1946All303 . 27. The strongest ground urged by the learned counsel for the appellant in support of his first contention is that in view of the definition clause, the proper way to interpret the proviso is to substitute the words cross objection from a decree in a suit for the word suit in the, proviso. If that is done, the phrase by females and minors in the proviso will be found to ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... s , denotes and is deemed to be . When means is employed it shows that the definition is a hard and fast definition and that no other' meaning can be assigned to the word or the expression defined than is put down in the definition. The use of the word denotes ' shows that the Legislature did not intend to put down a cast iron definition of the word but only sought to describe what the word might mean. When a thing is deemed to be something, the only meaning possible is that whereas it is not in reality that something, the Act directs that it should be treated as if it were that thing. As pointed out by Sri Jagdish Swarup in his Interpretation of Indian Statutes at p. 165 The word include or shall be deemed to include is very generally used in interpretation clauses in order to enlarge the meaning of words or phrases occurring in the body of the statute, or where it is intended that while the term defined should retain its ordinary meaning its scope should be widened by specific enumeration of certain matters which its ordinary meaning may or may not comprise so as to make the definition enumerative and not exhaustive, and when it is so used, these words or phrases must be ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... trial Court but to make it available to persons not falling in that category also in appeals and cross objections. Had that been the intention, the proviso would have been differently worded. 31. It, therefore, appears to me, if I may say so with respect, that the learned Judges, while deciding Shankar Ojha's Case (B), rightly laid down that:-- The benefit of the proviso must, therefore, it seems to us, be confined--to females and minors. In their case and in their case alone it seems to us, the value of the subject-matter of the suit, if it is a suit for personal maintenance, is to be the amount claimed for maintenance for one year. Beyond these two classes of persons, we think, the Legislature never intended to give any benefit of the proviso to any one else. If the method of interpretation, which for want of a better expression may be called the substitution method, is employed for interpreting the proviso to Section 7, the very intention with which the proviso was apparently enacted is likely to be defeated. The method will create difficulties in connection with other provisions of the Court-Fees Act too. An instance of such a difficulty may be found in the case of Zamurra ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ction 7. The suit had been decreed. The husband appealed and wanted to take advantage of the same proviso. The Chief Inspector of Stamps, however, urged that the court-fee on appeal should have been computed; in accordance with Section 7 and not in accordance with the proviso to Section 7. His contention was accepted by Mootham, J. (as he then was) who laid down that :-- A suit is defined in Section 2 of the Act as including a first or second appeal, and therefore in proceedings for reduction or enhancement of maintenance, whether by way of suit or appeal, the court-fee must be computed in the manner prescribed in Section 7(ii)(b) of the Act. He pointed out that in rejecting the contention of the Chief Inspector of Stamps, the District Judge had overlooked that the relief sought for in the appeal was not an order for personal maintenance by a female which would have attracted the provisions of Sub-section (ii) (a) of Section 7 but was an order for the reduction of maintenance already awarded and that the court-fee in such case was regulated by another Sub-section namely (ii) (b). 33. Section 7(ii)(b) reads like this :-- In suits for reduction or enhancement of maintenance and annui ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... n. It provided a concession to females and minors in a particular class of cases, whether suits or appeals. The concession was not available to persons not falling in that category. In this, class of cases, therefore, the valuation of the appeal or cross objection could be different from the valuation of the suit. 37. It appears to me to be obvious that when the Legislature enacted a proviso to Section 7. It was only conferring a concession on females and minors in connection with the amount needed initially to start a suit or appeal, it could not be concerned with the costs of the entire litigation. If a, suit for maintenance happens to be frivolous or vexatious, even a female plaintiff can be saddled with special costs. The mere fact that a female plaintiff, if she ultimately looses the appeal, may have to pay some extra amount cannot, therefore, justify the extension of the concession, meant for the particular class of persons mentioned in the proviso, to others not mentioned there. The case of a minor plaintiff attaining majority by the time he finds it necessary to file an appeal stands on a different footing. If the concession is applicable to minors only, it will certainly n ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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