A Court has no power under S.151 of the Civil Procedure Code to circumvent the provisions of law and exonerate a litigant from the liability to pay court-fees.

CHAGLA, C.J. :- This is an application for refund of court-fees. An appeal was preferred to this Court from a decree of the City Civil Court, and the appeal was compromised out of Court. The appellants have now applied for refund of court-fees, and the question is whether we have the jurisdiction to order the refund.

2. Now, the only power of the Court to order a refund of court-fees arises from Ss.13, 14 and 15 of the Court-fees Act, and it is not disputed that the case of the appellant does not fall under any of these three sections. The contention put forward by Mr. Pandya is that we should exercise our inherent power under S.151 of the Civil Procedure Code and order the refund. The refund is sought on the ground that the appeal was withdrawn before it was heard by this Court, and that the judicial machinery which functions when a litigant comes to this Court did not function fully; and, therefore, to put it in substance, the argument is that the court-fees were not earned by Government and it is but just that a part of the court-fees should be refunded. The argument put that way is very attractive; but the question is whether we have the power to order refund under circumstances of the present case.

Now, we think, as a general principle of law, it cannot be disputed that a Court has no power under S.151 to circumvent the provisions of law. If the Legislature has cast a particular obligation upon a citizen, it is not open to the Court under S.151 to exonerate the citizen from that liability or to reduce the quantum of that liability. Law must be given effect to, and the Court cannot be a party to the contravention of that law by exercising its supposedly inherent powers under S.151. Therefore, if there was a legal obligation upon the appellant to pay the court-fees before they could prefer an appeal to this Court, the mere fact that the appeal was compromised out of Court and was withdrawn, and not heard by this Court, cannot exonerate the appellants from paying the court-fees, nor can they contend that they are liable to pay less court-fees than what the law lays down is the proper court-fees. Undoubtedly, the Court has, as we shall presently point out, exercised inherent jurisdiction under S.151 to order refund of court-fees in cases not covered by Sections 13, 14 and 15. But when we look at the principle underlying these cases, the principle is clear in all of them. There may be cases where a litigant pays court-fees which he is not liable to pay under the Court-fees Act. The payment may be made either by inadvertence, oversight or mistake. Under these circumstances, the Court orders the revenue authorities to refund either the whole of the court-fees or the excess which was more than what the law required. But the principle which is clearly deducible from these cases is that, as there was no legal obligation to pay the court-fees or the excess which was paid by the party, the Court orders, in substance, the law to be carried out, and not to increase the liability upon the litigant. But this principle cannot be extended in support of a litigant who has paid the court-fees for which, in law, he was liable, but who, because of certain circumstances, feels that equitable considerations require that he should not be asked to pay either the full court-fees or part of the court-fees. If once this principle is understood and appreciated, then the large number of decisions which were cited at the bar become perfectly clear.

3. The case most strongly relied upon by Mr. Pandya is - Mohammad Sadiq Ali v. Ali Abbas, 7 Luck 588. In that case, a refund was ordered because the Court took the view that the appeal in that case was wholly unnecessary. Now, the facts in that case are not stated, and we are not able to judge as to why a particular appeal in that case was wholly unnecessary. But even so, in our view, this case goes beyond the principle which, we think, is the right principle, and, with respect, we do not agree with the