The court-fee payable on the valuation fixed by the Court under Section 19-1, Court-fees Act, 1870, is to be paid before the hearing of the proceeding.

Banerji, J.

1. These two applications will be dealt with together although they arise from two different orders passed by the learned Additional District Judge of Gaya with reference to a probate proceeding brought by the petitioner.

2. On 22-6-1948, the petitioner filed an application for probate of the will of late Babu Triloki Prasad Singh of village Barauli and valued the assets contained in the list attached to the application at Rs. 15,000/-. A copy of the list with the valuation was sent to the Collector of Gaya who submitted a report that the assets had been undervalued and that their actual value was Rupees 1,82,246/8/-. On objection by the petitioner, the Court below appointed a pleader-Commissioner to investigate into the question of valuation & submit his report. The pleader-commissioner estimated the value of the properties at Rs. 1,22,606 to which the petitioner, the Collector and also the opposite party filed objections. All the objections were disposed of by the learned Additional District Judge who fixed the value of the properties at Rs. 1,69,834/-.

3. After fixing the valuation, the Court below directed the petitioner to deposit Rs. 10,350, being the probate duty, in cash before the application could be taken up for hearing.

4. The valuation was fixed by the order dated 8-5-1953, and this has given rise to Civil Revision No. 547 of 1953. The order directing the petitioner to deposit the requisite probate duty in cash before the hearing was passed on 11-5-1953, and Civil Revision No. 546 of 1953 arises out of this order.

5. It need not detain me long to dispose of Civil Revision No. 547 of 1953. The ground taken by the petitioner is that the Collector had not complied with the provisions of Sec.19-H, Court-fees Act (Act 7 of 1870), his grievance being that the Additional District Judge had no jurisdiction in proceeding to fix the valuation without being moved for the same by the Collector after he had complied with the provision of Sec.19-H, Court-fees Act. According to Sec.19-H of the Act, the Court shall cause notice of the application for probate or letters of administration to be given to the Collector and, in the case of the High Court, such notice has to be given to the Chief Controlling Revenue Authority. In this case the notice was to be served on the Collector and it, actually, was served as a result of which he reported that the valuation given by the petitioner was much below that found by him. According to Sub-section (3) of Sec.19-H, the Collector may require the attendance of the petitioner and enquire into the matter in case he suspects that the value of the property of the deceased has been under-estimated and ask the petitioner to amend the valuation. If, then, the petitioner does not amend the valuation to. his satisfaction, the Collector, according to Sub-section (4) of the same section, may move the Court before which the application for probate or letters of administration was made to hold an enquiry into the true value of the property.

In this case the matter was not enquired into in presence of the petitioner or his agent and the Collector did not ask the petitioner to amend the valuation and, on his denial, -move the Court below to hold an enquiry into the true value of the property, but these duties were not obligatory on him and the procedure adopted, by him cannot be said to be illegal What he has done is that he held an enquiry and submitted his own valuation to the Court below in which the petitioner took objection, whereupon the Court directed a Pleader-Commissioner to enquire into the matter and report. When the report was submitted, all the parties including the Collector, who is to be deemed to be a party to the enquiry according to Sub-section (5), filed objections and in their presence the Court disposed of the objections raised by each and arrived at its own finding.

The petitioner, therefore, had ample opportunity to lay his grievances before the Court after a thor