Sustainability of revision against order rejecting petition for leave to sue as pauper.

The office has objected to the maintainability of the C.R.P. sought to be filed by the petitioner. I have heard the petitioner’s counsel. The facts are rather curious. The petitioner filed O.P. No. 57 of 1951 on the file of the Sub-Court, Bapatla, under Order 33, rule 1, Civil Procedure Code, for leave to sue as a pauper. Her petition was rejected on 6th August, 1953 and she was directed to pay court-fee due on the plaint, and ten days’ time was fixed for it. She failed to pay the court-fee within the time fixed, and the pauper plaint was rejected on 20th August, 1953. She has now filed a C.R.P. against the order, dated 6th August, 1953, refusing leave to file the suit in forma pauperis, but, unfortunately, only after the later order, dated 20th August, 1953, rejecting the pauper plaint.

A Full Bench of this Court, to which I too was a party, has held in Satyanarayanacharyulu v. Ramalingam1 (the ruling relied on by the office) that where a plaint, on which additional court-fee is required to be paid, is rejected under Order 7, rule 11, Civil Procedure Code, for default of payment of the additional court-fee, within the time granted, the remedy of the plaintiff is to file an appeal against the order rejecting the plaint, which is a decree under section 2(2), Civil Procedure Code and not to file a revision against the order requiring the payment of the additional court-fee, and if the plaintiff wants to file such a revision, he should do so before the plaint is rejected; and that if he waits till the rejection of the plaint, his remedy lies only in filing an appeal and not in filing a revision petition. The Full Bench decision will apply to the rejection of the plaint of a would-be pauper also, as in this case. Any party who is aggrieved by an order calling for an additional court-fee, should at once take a copy of that order and file a revision petition and get a stay, if he does not want to pay the additional court-fee and only wants time to file a revision petition against that order. If he waits till the time granted for paying the additional court-fee expires and the plaint is rejected, and does not even request the Court before the plaint is rejected to grant him time for getting copies to file a revision petition in which case the Court will certainly grant a reasonable time, he cannot afterwards file a revision petition, as his remedy then is only an appeal. In this case, it seems to me that the petitioner, on being refused leave to sue as a pauper, hoped to pay the court-fee due, and did not want to file a revision petition. Having failed to pay it, the pauper plaint was rejected. Then, as an after-thought, this revision petition against the earlier order has been filed by this petitioner.

I am not impressed with the petitioner’s counsel’s argument that a would-be pauper, who has to pay additional court-fee, stands on a better footing than an original non-pauper, who has to pay additional court-fee. Once a man is refused to be treated as a pauper, by an order of Court, he at once becomes a declared non-pauper, and I cannot see any distinction after such refusal between the would-be pauper and an original non-pauper. In the case of pauper, he is, under the law, required to affix a 8-anna court-fee stamp to his pauper petition, and, when he is refused to be treated as pauper, he is given credit for this eight annas and asked to pay the deficit of the court-fee due on the plaint.

It used to be the practice in olden days for some non-paupers also to file plaints, requiring stamps of Rs. 100, Rs. 200, etc., with one-rupee or half-rupee stamps, and pray for time to pay the deficit. That evil practice, which might result in blackmailing the other side by holding a Damocles Sword over it, has been practically put a stop to by circulars of this Court. But, it is obvious that in those cases also, the deficit court-fees will be very great, and, if not paid, the plaints will have to be rejected just as in the cases of people li