Sulaiman, A.C.J:— It seems to be the practice of some junior vakils to file appeals with insufficient court-fee stamps, knowing that they are insufficient, with a view to save limitation. I think that such deliberate attempts to get round the provisions of the Court Fees Act should not be tolerated. If a litigant has not got sufficient money ready to pay the whole court fees, the appeal ought to be filed when such court-fees have been made good, accompanied with an application for extension of time. But the filling of an insufficiently stamped appeal, knowing it to be defective, should not be permitted.
No doubt the Bombay High Court has held that an appellate court is bound to accept an insufficiently stamped memorandum of appeal and to grant time to make it good: Achut Ramchandra Pai v. Nagappa Bab Balgya. But this view has not been followed at Patna Ram Sahay Ram Pande v. Kumar Lachmi Narayan Singh; nor by the Lahore High Court, Lekh Ram v. Ramji Das. The Madras High Court has also dissented from the Bombay view: Akkaraju Narayana v. Akkaraju Seshamma.
Section 149 of the Code of Civil Procedure no doubt gives a court power to allow deficiency to be made good in its discretion. The concession cannot be claimed as of right. But section 4 of the Court Fees Act expressly provides that no document shall be “filed, exhibited, or recorded in, or shall be received, or furnished by any of the said High Courts in the exercise of its original, appellate or revisional jurisdiction, unless in respect of such document there paid a fee of an amount indicated in the schedules as the proper fee.”
I am clearly of opinion that we have full power to refuse to accept a memorandum of appeal when it has the endorsement of the Stamp Reporter that the amount of the court fees paid is insufficient; otherwise the provisions of section 4 of the Court Fees Act would be evaded indirectly. That there is such a discretion is clear from the case of our own High Court, Jai Singh Gir v. Sita Ram Singh. Chapter in, rule 10, of our rules also contemplates a case where an insufficiently stamped document has been filed or used in the Court or office “through a mistake or inadvertence.”
I accordingly refuse to accept these insufficiently stamped appeals and direct them to be returned to the counsel, with liberty to file them afresh on payment of full court fees, accompanied by an application for extension of time under section 5 of the Limitation Act, provider good cause is shown for the extension.