JUDGMENT - (1) By his order dated the 26th September 1966 the learned Registrar has held that First Appeal Stamp No. 8263 of 1966 filed by the defendants in this Court is barred by limitation. The defendants have filed this note under Rule 7(1) of the Appellate Side Rules for revision of the Registrars Order. As the question is of general importance I would like to take my reasons for holding that the Registrar is right in the view he has taken.

(2) In a suit filed by the respondent against the appellants, the learned Civil Judge, Senior Division, Kolhapur, delivered his judgment on the 23rd of September 1965. He decreed the suit but directed:-

"Decree to be drawn up subject to the payment of necessary Court-fee stamp by the plaintiff who shall recover the same from the two defendants as per above order."

The respondent paid the necessary Court fees on the 16th of December 1965 and the decree was drawn up on the 23rd of December 1965. The appellants applied for certified copies of the judgment and decree on the 22nd of February 1966 and those copies were ready for delivery on the 20th of March 1966. The appellants filed the First Appeal in this Court on the 13th of June 1966, on the re-opening of the Court after the Summer Vacation.

(3) Under Article 116 of the Limitation Act, 1963, the period prescribed for filing an appeal to the High is ninety days and the time begins to run from the date of the decree or Order. if the appellants are entitled to the exclusion of the time from the 23rd of September 1965, the date of judgment, till the 30 th of March 1966, their appeal would be within limitation. If on the other hand the time between the 22nd of February 1966, when the appellants applied for certified copies of the judgment and decree, and the 30th of March 1966, when the certified copies were ready is alone excluded, the appeal as held by the learned Registrar would be beyond time by eighty-two days.

(4) The material provision of the Limitation Act that is required to be considered in this matter is Section 12 which provides by sub-section (2), in so far as is material, that in computing the period of limitation for an appeal the time requisite for obtaining a copy of the decree appealed from shall be excluded. The Explanation to Section 12 provides that in computing the time requisite for obtaining a copy of a decree or an order;

"Any time taken by the Court to prepare the decree or order before an application for a copy thereof is made shall not be excluded."

Now, as held by a Full Bench of this Court in Jayashankar Mulshankar Mehta v. Mayabhai Lalbhai Shah, 54 Bom LR 11, the time requisite for obtaining a copy of the decree is not the entire time spent by the Court in preparing the decree but the time which is properly necessary for obtaining a copy of the decree. The time which was taken by the Court in preparing the decree in this case shall have to be excluded, because this time was certainly not taken on account of any default on the part of the appellants. If the respondent, who was liable under the judgment of the Trial Court to pay Court-fees before the drawing up of the decree, had taken an unreasonable time for paying the Court-fees, the question might have arisen, if he were to file an appeal, whether the time between the date an application was made by him for obtaining certify copies of the judgment and decree and the date on which those copies were ready could be exclude even if such an application was made by him immediately after the judgment was delivered. In fact, it is in that class of cases that the question as to what is the time requisite for obtaining a copy of a decree arises in a sharp form. as the appellants were not bound under the judgment t do any act or to take any step as a condition precedent to the drawing up of the decree, the entire time between the date when they applied for certified copies and the date when the copies were ready shall have to be excluded.

(5) This however does not assist the a

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