' Sale of agricultural land made in favour of the two petitioners and Irshad Ahmed respondent No, 2, through a mutation sanctioned on 27-9-1974, was sued out on 27-9-1975 to be pre-empted by Muhammad Hussain respondent No,
1. While denying his superior right of preemption, vendees raised a number of objections also which included those of partial pre-emption, limitation, court- fee, collusion and waiver and a total of 14 issues were thereupon set down for trial but no cogent evidence was led in support of those objections. Rather, it was admitted by D. W. 1 that plaintiff is owner of estate, as bad been proved even by Exh P. 2, a copy of Jamabandi for 1972-73. No evidence at all was led in support of the plea of collusion and the contention about waiver of right of pre-emption was rejected for the reason that the evidence was not reliable. The objection about limitation was also turned down because no definite date of delivery of possession under the sale had been proved and the suit was held to be within time with reference to the date of attestation of mutation. Ostensible sale price of Rs, 12,000 was found to have been fixed in good faith and actually paid. Claim of the vendees regarding compensation for improvements was also accepted to the tune of Rs, 12,858, to decree the plaintiff's suit against them on payment of Rs, 24,858.
2. Appeal filed by the vendees was dismissed by a learned Additional District Judge by affirming the findings of the trial Court on all the issues. Vendees have now come upto this Court on revision.
3. Learned counsel has frankly conceded at the very out set that he does not have any objection with regard to the merits of the decrees passed by the two Courts below but urged that the suit was under-valued for purposes of court-fee and also contended that court-fee was liable to be paid on the value of improvements, in addition to the one payable on a proper valuation. His argument as regards the valuation is that since in the Khasra Girdawari there is no crop shown to have been raised in a part of the suit land in Rabi 1975 when it was left fallow, therefore, court-fee was liable to be paid on the market value of the land. This argument is altogether misconceived and untenable because the criterion under the law is the yield of net-profits during the period of one yea immediately preceding the presentation of plaint and not necessarily the profits accrued in both the crops. Clearly, enough, net-profits accrued in only one crop would be the net-profits accrued from the land during the relevant year and they would not cease to be so, on account merel of its failure to yield any more profit in the ensuing crop within that year. Hence, the contention to that extent is repelled. His on the argument,-regarding the plaintiff's liability to pay court-fee on the value of improvements decreed in his favour, is also ill-conceived and is rather preposterous because claim regarding improvements and demand of compensation for them is made in written statements only and a plaintiff cannot always forestall the defence pleas at the time of institution of his suit. It will be only unreasonable to expect him to pay court-fee without knowing that a claim for payment of compensation will at all be made by the defendant and, if ever, for what value Liability to pay court-fee thereon at any subsequent stage also cannot arise because there is no direct provision on the subject to entail liability to pay court-fee on the value of improvements. Actually, court-fee is payable on the reliefs claimed in the plaints and in this suit for possession of land it had to be paid, under section 7(vi) of the Court. Fees Act, `according to the value of the subject-matter', such value being determinable in accordance with the rules laid down in the Act. Fiscal provisions, it is well-settled, have to be strictly construed and cannot unduly stretched. Again, the improvements do not, as such, form the subject-matter of plaintiff's suit and it is a different matter that a successful plaintiff is made liable to pay compensation for improvements bur this liability cannot have any bearing on the question of payment of court-fee because it is regulated by equitable considerations arising incidentally to the success of his suit, whereby the property may go to him alongwith those improvements. However, in those cases in which improvements may be severable the successful plaintiff, can, well within his right, insist upon taking the property without those improvements and then a liability to pay for the improvements would also be not there. In this context Aziz Din v. Sham Din (1), may be cited as an instance.
Furthermore, in suits for possession, where value of the subject-matter has been provided for to be determined by the market value, if the, claim is based on a right of pre-emption, it is the age-old principle reiterated in Sher Muhammad v. Ahmad and others (2), that market value at the time of sale, and not the one at the time of presentation of plaint, regulates the suit. The improvements by the vendee, though made in good faith, have of course to be subsequent to the sale but before the institution of suit and even through they will remain liable to be paid for by the successful plaintiff if he has to take them, in the above view they have to be simply ruled out of consideration for the purposes of determining the market value of the property at the time of sale. Again, the question of court-fee in the context of the right to take the improvements and the liability thereupon to pay compensation for them, to be
(1) 91 P R 1892 (2) AIR 1924 Lab, 380 viewed from another angle, it may be noticed that where in appeal a dispute is raised regarding the plaintiff's right to take them or his liability to pay a sum different from the one decreed in the Court below, court-fee becomes liable to be paid on the value of the subject-matter of appeal which, as has been held by a Full Bench in Waryam Singh v. Mehtab Singh and others (1), would be the amount representing the difference between the sum decreed and that by which it is claimed to be increased or decreased but valuation of the suit itself does not change even in that case.
Hence, Obsession of the learned counsel that the plaintiff has benefited to the extent of the value of improvements, without payment of any court-fee on it, is only false. Petitioners do not stand to gain any benefit in the plaintiff being made liable to pay some more court-fee. In Rachappa Subrao Jadhav Dasai v. Shidappa Venkatrao Jadhav Desai (2), their Lordships expressed themselves as under :- "The Court Fees Act was passed not to arm a litigant with a weapon of technically against his opponent, out to secure revenue for the benefit of the State. It is not competent to a defendant in a suit to utilize the provisions of the Act, at the appellate stage, not to safeguard the interests of the State, but to obstruct the plaintiff. i,e, he cannot contend that the Court wrongly decided to the detriment of the revenue, but that it dealt with, the case without, jurisdiction."
There is no jurisdictional question at all raised in this case and hence, the petitioners are not entitled to raise the question of court-fee. Moreover, any error in calculation of court-fee payable, even if there may have been one, would not be such an irregularity in the proceedings as may either affect the merits of the case or the jurisdiction of the H Court so as to render its decree liaole to interference within the meaning of section 99 of the C. P. C. Contentions raised for the petitioners are not tenable and are, therefore, repelled as being without merit also.
4. No other point has been argued before me.
5. However, before parting with this case notice may also be taken of the queer expressions 'we' and 'our', very generously used with reference to his own-self by Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Khan, Additional District Judge, Gujrat. In a four-paged judgment passed in this case, at one place he has said, "Our findings on these issues are as under" and elsewhere he has thrice used the word 'we'. In Central India, Urdu equivalents of these words are sometimes arrogantly used as first personal pronouns but they are normally used in plural sense, as is also the case in English wherein they are used in place of singulars by sovereign rulers or by writers of editorials and unsigned articles for securing impersonal style but they are not used otherwise, for personal glorification. Rather, therein such a concept does not exist and hence simple words T and 'my' are used and they may have been regarded sufficient to convey all the egotistic veneration of even the highest order as may have been desired to be expressed by the words 'we' and 'our'. In the judicial system here, subordinate Courts are presided over by one Judge each who sits single to decide cases. How twit, may an occasion arise to pluralise one-self? It is surprising as to why may he have not been
(1) 19 I C 961 (2) AIR 1918 P C 188 told so far that his use of those words in English is not only improper but is also incorrect.
6. This Civil Revision is devoid of substance and is only frivolous. It is accordingly dismissed in limine.