Sundaram Chetty, J.

1. The question involved in this petition is whether the defendant-petitioner has to pay the court-fee under Article 1, Sch. 1, Court-fees Act, on the amount of Rs. 2,000, which he has claimed as against the plaintiff in his written statement by way of damages in a suit brought by the plaintiff on a promissory note. The learned District Munsif has disposed of this question, which is not after all free from difficulty, in a single sentence, namely I think the defendant must pay the court-fee due on the set off claimed by him as damages against the plaintiff.

2. It is amazing that he has not chosen to give his reasons for the conclusion arrived at by him. It is therefore difficult to know what reasons were operating on the mind of the learned District Munsif when he passed this order that the court-fee must be paid. This sort of deciding a contested petition should, to say the least, be deprecated. However I had the advantage of the arguments of the learned Counsel on both sides on this question. Order 8, Rule 6, Civil P.C., deals with set-off claimed by a defendant in his written statement. The amount so claimed should be an ascertained sum of money legally