Sir John Edge, C.J, Burkitt and Aikman, JJ.:— The question before us in this appeal is one of some difficulty. It had come before the Court in the case of Dharam Narain Lal v. Jagmohan Pande, but had not been actually decided. The question shortly is whether a Court, acting under s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure in a case falling under cl. (a) or cl. (b) of that section, has power to extend the period of limitation within which a suit may be brought; that is to say, whether a Court has power under the Code of Civil Procedure [66] to give a plaintiff time beyond limitation within which to correct the valuation of his relief or to supply requisite stamped paper where the plaint was written on paper insufficiently stamped. The question before us has no reference to the duties imposed upon a Court by s. 10 or 11 of the Court Bees Act. The facts of this case, so far as it is necessary to refer to them, are shortly as follows:—The suit was for possession of sir lands which were alleged to have been purchased by the predecessor in title of the plaintiff on the 20th of December 1878. That alleged predecessor was said to have sold his interest to the plaintiff on the 21st of April 1890. The plaintiff presented his plaint in the Court of the Munsif of Chibramau at a quarter to 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the 20th of December 1890, i.e, at a quarter to 4 o'clock on the 365th day of the twelfth year of limitation. The plaintiff presented his plaint claiming possession of land held by the defendants. Upon the presentation of the plaint the Munsarim to whom in that Court plaints could be presented, made the following report:—“In this suit the time expires today. The suit has been filed just now at 3-45 p.m A Court fees stamp of the value of as 12 is affixed. As the claim relates to sir land forming part of a mahal and five times (the revenue) of it is Rs. 45-12-2, there is a deficiency of Rs. 3 under cl. (5) s. 7 of the Court Bees Act, 1870. Unless a sufficient stamp is affixed the suit cannot be registered. The account of Court fees has been closed and the time for the Court to rise has approached. I submit this for your information. Dated the 20th of December 1890.” Upon that the Munsif made the following order:—“This petition came on with the report of the Munsarim. Beckoning from the date of the cause of action, the period, it appears, extends up to this day. The pleader was asked to make up the deficiency in the Court fee, but he said that stamps could not he had now; that the 21st of December was a Sunday; and that he would make up the deficiency in two days. Ordered that this be returned to the pleader, that he may present it with a petition within three days after making up the deficiency in the Court fee, and then it will be registered.” From the report and the order which we have quoted it is obvious that this was not a case in which the Munsif could have made an [67] order under the second paragraph of s. 28 of the Court Fees Act. It would appear that this case is a case in which, if the plaintiff's pleader's statement was true, it was impossible for him, as he had not procured a proper stamp in time, to satisfy at a quarter to 4 o'clock on that afternoon the requirements of the Court Fees Act. The presentation of the plaint had been delayed until the office from which the stamp could have been obtained had been closed for the day. The plaintiff had valued the sir lands at one year's rental, a valuation quite preposterous and one which could not have been accepted, and which the plaintiff and his advisers must have known would not be accepted, by any Court; and on that valuation he chose, almost at the last moment of the Court's sitting on the last day of the 12 years' limitation, to present his plaint in the Court. The deficiency was made good within the time mentioned by the Munsif, but after the expiration of the 12 years' limitation, and the suit, which had been instituted, so far as a suit on an insufficiently stamped plaint can be said to be instituted under s. 48, was registered under s. 58 of the Code of Civil Procedure as having been admitted. It is to be kept in mind in considering this case and all similar cases where the question of limitation arises as to a suit or as to an appeal that there is a difference between the presentation of the plaint or memorandum of appeal and the admission of the suit or appeal. That distinction is recognised by ss. 58 and 59 with regard to suits and by s. 548 in the case of appeals. Again, another matter has to be borne in mind, and that is the distinction in result between the rejection of a plaint under s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure and the dismissal of a suit on the ground of limitation in accordance with s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877. The dismissal of a suit on the ground of limitation would be a final bar, unless removed on appeal, to the presentation of any fresh suit on the same cause of action. The rejection of a plaint under s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure would not of its own force preclude the plaintiff from presenting a fresh plaint in respect of the same cause of action. That appears from s. 56 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Ordinarily the procedure provided by s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure would be applied before a plaint was admitted and the suit registered, [68] but that s. 54 is not restricted to a proceeding prior to admission and registration appears from cl. (d) of s. 54 read in conjunction with cl. (b) of s. 53. In Kishore Singh v. Sabdal Singh it was held by this Court that s. 54 might be applied at any stage of a suit. In the case of Kishore Singh v. Sabdal Singh no question of limitation was considered by the Court. When a plaint has been returned under s. 53, except probably on the ground of its being wrongly framed by reason of non-joinder of parties necessitating the joinder of a person not previously a party to the suit, it is difficult to see how any rule of limitation would be violated, as by s. 53 it is “provided that a plaint cannot be altered so as to convert a suit of one character into a suit of another and different character.” S. 22 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, provides for the case of a pgrson being added as a party after the institution of the suit. A casual reading of cl. (c) of s. 54 with s. 56 might lead to the conclusion that ss. 54 and 56 taken together were in conflict with s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877. There is however no such conflict; cl. (c) of s. 54 undoubtedly would apply to a case in which it appeared “from the statement in the plaint” that the suit was barred by limitation, a statement which might be erroneous, but it would not apply to a case in which after the admission of the suit it was judicially decided on evidence as to facts and dates that the suit was barred by limitation, in which latter case it would be the duty of the Court under s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, to dismiss the suit and not merely to reject it. A judicial decision on evidence that a suit was barred by limitation would operate under s. 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as a bar to a fresh suit for the same cause of action.
Section 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure is not expressly at variance with any provision of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, and we fail to see that it is by inclination from anything contained in it at variance with any provision of that Act.
There is in the Limitation Act no power given to a Court to exercise discretion as to extending the period of limitation except [69] such as is contained in the second paragraph of s. 5, and that paragraph does not relate to suits. The other sections of the Limitation Act which have the effect of extending the ordinary periods of limitation for suits or appeals are sections which provide in themselves for the extension of limitation, on certain facts being proved, such, for instance, as the section relating to fraud, that relating to minority, that relating to a plaintiff who has bona fide prosecuted his remedy in a Court which had not jurisdiction and that relating to a defendant who has been absent from the jurisdiction of the Indian Courts. Consequently, except under s. 5, a Court is given by the very Act which provides for limitation, no power to extend limitation with regard to either suits, appeals or applications. We are, however, asked to read s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure as giving a Court a power to extend limitation which that Court would not have under the Indian Limitation Act. It is one of the primary rules of construction to be applied to statutes that if statutes of the Legislature can be read so as to reconcile them they are so to be read and they are not to be read as in conflict unless it is manifest and apparent that there is a conflict between them. Now if we were to construe s. 54 as giving a Court power to extend limitation we should be giving to that section a construction at variance with the plain wording of s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, and with the clear intention of the Legislature as evidenced by the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, that a suit should not be entertained unless it was instituted within the periods of limitation prescribed by that Act. According to the explanation contained in s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, “a suit is instituted in ordinary cases when the plaint is presented to the proper officer.” It is enacted by s. 4 of the Code of Civil Procedure that “every suit shall be instituted by presenting a plaint to the Court or such officer as it appoints in this behalf.” It is enacted by s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, that “subject to the provisions contained in ss. 5 to 25 (inclusive) every suit instituted, appeal presented and application made after the period of limitation prescribed therefor by the second schedule hereto annexed, shall be dismissed, although limitation has not been set up as a defence.” It was decided by this [70] Court in the case of Balkaran Rai v. Gobind Nath Tiwari that effect must be given to the Court Pees Act, and particularly to the prohibitive provisions of that Act contained in s. 28. A plaint is a document within the meaning of the Court Fees Act and within the meaning of s. 28, and as a suit can only be instituted by the presentation of a plaint, the presentation of an insufficiently stamped document, which if sufficiently stamped could be treated as a plaint, cannot be regarded in law as the institution of a suit within the meaning of the explanation to s. 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, or of s. 48 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Section 28 of the Court Fees Act prohibits the Court from regarding any document which ought to be stamped under that Act as of any validity unless and until it is properly stamped. The result is that on the 20th of December, 1890 there was no plaint before the Court which could be considered as of any validity as a plaint, and no plaint the presentation of which could be considered as the institution of a suit. Section 4 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, where it says that “a suit in ordinary cases is instituted when the plaint is presented to the proper officer,” must, having regard to s. 28 of the Court Fees Act, be taken to refer to a plaint which is sufficiently stamped according to the Court Fees Act. If we were to hold otherwise we should be holding that a document to which the first paragraph of s. 28 of the Court Fees Act applied, and which was insufficiently stamped, and which was never stamped under the second paragraph of that section, was, in a Court of Justice which was bound to administer the Court Fees Act, valid as a plaint when it was insufficiently stamped.
We have been pressed with two decisions on behalf of the plaintiff, appellant here. One is that of the High Court at Calcutta in the case of Moti Sahu v. Chhatri Das in which it was held that in a case in which a suit was presented on an insufficiently stamped plaint and the deficiency was made good after limitation under an order which was treated as having been made under s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure, “the date of the institution of the suit [71] should be reckoned from the date of the presentation of the plaint and not from that on which the requisite Court fee was subsequently put in so as to make it admissible as a plaint.” The learned Judges in that case apparently conceived that a Court acting under s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure would also be acting under the second paragraph of s. 28 of the Court Fees Act. In the case to which we are referring it appeared that on the presentation of the plaint a report was made that it was on insufficiently stamped paper and thereupon the Court ordered the plaintiff to pay the proper Court foes within a time fixed by the Court. With the utmost deference to the learned Judges who decided that case, it is difficult to conceive how the Court could in that case have acted under the second paragraph of s. 28 of the Court Fees Act. Before the plaint there was received, filed, or used within the meaning of s. 28, the insufficiency of the stamp was brought to the attention of the Court.
Further, with record to that case it is apparently in conflict in principle with another decision of the same High Court in Yakui-un-nissa Bibee v. Kishoree Mohun Roy. The only apparent distinction between the two cases is that in the case reported at page 747, it was a memorandum of appeal in the Court of a District Judge which was written upon insufficiently stamped paper, whereas in the case reported at page 780, it was a plaint in a Court of first instance subordinate to the High Court. If the later decision is correct it appears to us that the prior decision must have been incorrect, because having regard to s. 582 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which makes applicable to appeals the provisions of Chapter V which contains s. 54, a Court of appeal would have the same powers and would have to perform the same duties with regard to a memorandum of appeal as a Court of first instance has to perform with regard to a plaint. The other case with which we have been pressed is one relied upon by the learned Judges in the case reported in I.L.R, 19 Calc. p. 780, and it is the case of Skinner v. Orde(3). Those learned Judges rely upon the decision [72] of their Lordships of the Privy Council in Skinner v. Orde as having decided that the date of the institution of the suit in that case should be reckoned from the date of the presentation of the plaint (p. 783). The decision of their Lordships in the case of Skinner v. Orde, so far as it has any bearing on this subject, was fully considered by this Court in Balkaran Rai v. Gobind Nath Tiwari. In the case of Skinner v. Orde the document which was originally presented in the Court was an application for leave to sue as a pauper. It was presented under Act VIII of 1859, and it was apparently, we infer, in compliance with s. 300 of that Act which required that such application should contain all that it was requisite for a plaint to contain and should be subscribed and verified in the manner prescribed for the subscription and verification of plaints. That application before a sufficient stamp at the time it was presented, i.e, it bore the stamp required by law for an application for leave to sue as a pauper, and the law required no further stamp if the application was granted. Under s. 308 of Act VIII of 1859, if the application had been granted, it would have been numbered and registered and by virtue of s. 308 would have been deemed to be the plaint in the suit. It was, at any rate, for the purpose for which and at the time when it was presented, a sufficiently stamped document. Their Lordships of the Privy Council held that there was no provision in the Act meeting the particular case before them, namely, a case in which the application of the petitioner who applied to sue as a pauper was not granted under s. 308 and was not refused under s. 310, but their Lordships were of opinion that the case approached more nearly the state of things contemplated by s. 308 than that contemplated by s. 310 of Act VIII of 1859. The part of the judgment in Skinner v. Orde which has been especially pressed upon us and which apparently was in the contemplation of the High Court at Calcutta in the case of Moti Sahu was as follows:—“The petition of plaint was placed upon the file and numbered on the 19th of July 1873, and this is the plaint that is allowed to go on. Although the analogy is not perfect, what has happened is not [73] at all unlike that which so commonly happens in practice in the Indian Courts, that a wrong stamp is put upon the plaint originally, and the proper stamp is afterwards affixed. The plaint is not converted into a plaint from that time, but remains with its original date on the file of the Court and becomes free from the objection of an improper stamp when the correct stamp has been placed upon it.” Now, where the insufficiency of the stamp is brought to the attention of the Court before the plaint is admitted, the plaint is not brought upon the file unless a lawful order made under s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure has been complied with. No doubt cases do occur in which after the plaint has been admitted and has been brought upon the file, which we understand to mean registered, it is discovered that the stamp is not sufficient and that the plaint has been received and filed through inadvertence or mistake on insufficiently stamped paper. In the latter case, upon the plaint being properly stamped in accordance with an order of the Court under s. 28 of the Court-fees Act, the plaint would be as valid as if it had been properly stamped in the first instance, and consequently would remain with its original date on the file of the Court. That probably was the class of case to which their Lordships of the Privy Council were referring at page 250 of the Report in I.L.R, 2 Allahabad; The case of Mussamat Begee Begum v. Syud Yusuf Ali was also relied on behalf of the appellant here. Although all the proceedings in that case took place after the coming into force of the Court Fees Act (Act No. VII of 1870), the provisions of that Act were not taken into consideration by the learned Judges who decided that case, and consequently on this point we do not consider it as an authority.
There is a further reason why we cannot construe s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure as conferring on a Court a power to extend the ordinary periods of limitation for the institution of suits. It is this. If that section is to be construed as conferring such a power upon a Court, there does not 1 appear to be any provision contained in the Code of Civil Procedure limiting the power of a Court to extend [74] limitation, and a defendant would apparently be left without a remedy by appeal or otherwise against an order under cl. (a) or cl. (b) of s. 54 fixing a time which might have the effect of extending limitation by one, ten or twenty years. Such an order would not be a decree as decree is defined in s. 2 of the Code, nor would it be an order appealable under s. 588. Clause (6) of s. 588 would not apply to such an order, as that clause relates only to orders returning plaints for amendments (as to which see s. 53) and to orders returning plaints to be presented to the proper Court (as to which see s. 57). If a Court had power under s. 54 to extend limitation, its order having the effect of extending limitation by one, ten or twenty years could not be questioned under s. 591 as, there being nothing to limit the discretion of the Court in that event there would not be “any error, defect or irregularity” within the meaning of that section in the order, nor would a High Court have in such event any jurisdiction under s. 622 to interfere with such an order. The power of a Court to act under the second paragraph of s. 5 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, is, on the other hand, limited by the appellant or applicant showing sufficient cause for not having presented the appeal or having made the application for a review of judgment within the prescribed period, and consequently a defendant could in appeal by the plea that the appeal or application was barred by limitation, raise the question as to whether sufficient cause had been shown to justify the Court's action under s. 5. We cannot conceive that it was the intention of the Legislature to give by s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure a power to a Court to extend the period of limitation as against a defendant who would ordinarily have no opportunity of being heard before an order under cl. (a) or cl. (b) of s. 54 fixing a time was made, and who would have no means of correcting by appeal or in revision an unreasonable exercise of such a power, if it existed.
We have come to the conclusion that when a Court fixes a time under cl. (a) or cl. (b) of s. 54 of the Code of Civil Procedure, it must be a time within limitation, and that section does not give a Court any power to extend the ordinarily prescribed period of [75] limitation for suits. The plaintiff, appellant here has only himself to thank if he had any merits in this suit. He brought his suit at the last moment of a twelve years' limitation. He inserted a ridiculous valuation which no Court would accept. He delayed presenting his plaint in the Court of the Munsif until that Court was about to rise for the day and until the office from which he could have obtained stamped paper had closed for the day. We hold that his suit was barred by limitation, and we dismiss his appeal and affirm the decree of the Court below with costs.
Appeal dismissed.