The main legal point established in the judgment is the importance of proper valuation of the suit, payment of court fees, and the consequences of deliberately misleading the court.

This application filed under Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) takes exception to the order dated 17-04-2012 passed in RCS. No.26-A/12 by 13th Civil Judge Class-2, Bhopal.

2. Briefly stated, the facts are that the respondent No.1/plaintiff filed a suit for declaration and permanent injunction on 10-01-2012. Upon receiving notices in the said case, the present applicants/defendants No.10 & 11 filed an application under Order 7 Rule 11 r/w Section 151 of CPC on 20-03-2012 (Annexure A/3). The Court below heard the parties on the said application and rejected the said application by impugned order dated 17-04-2012.

3. Shri Abhijeet Awasthi, learned counsel for the applicants assailed this order by contending that in the application preferred under Order 7 Rule 11 of CPC, the applicants had taken two fold objections. The first objection of the applicants was that the plaintiff has not valued the suit properly and accordingly Court fees is also not paid in accordance with the requirement of law. The second objection of the present applicants in the said application was that the plaintiff has prayed for a relief to declare the sale deed dated 01-06-1996 as null and void. The case of the plaintiff is that he is not the signatory to the said sale deed and said sale deed is a forged document. It is submitted that as per Article 56 of the Limitation Act for claiming the relief to declare the forgery of an instrument issued or registered, the period of limitation is “three years”. By taking this Court to the plaint averments, it is urged that the plaintiff filed an appeal under Section 44(1) of M.P. Land Revenue Code before Sub-Divisional Officer (S.D.O.), Tehsil Huzur, District Bhopal after obtaining information regarding aforesaid sale deed executed in the year 1996. It is contended that the plaintiff cleverly mentioned the appeal number in the plaint averments as Appeal No.36/09-10 whereas certified copy of the revenue order sheet of S.D.O. shows that the case number of said appeal is 36/Appeal/07-08. The said appeal was presented on 07-07-2008. The plaintiff in order to mislead the Court below and with a view to bring his suit within limitation, deliberately mentioned the year of institution of appeal wrongly and this fact was pointed out before the Court below. Thus, as per the plaint averments itself, the suit was barred by time because sale deed dated 01-06-1996 is assailed in the suit filed on 12-01-2012 which is beyond the prescribed period of limitation. Shri Awasthi submits that the Court below has erred in rejecting both the grounds/objections taken by the applicants.

4. To elaborate, learned counsel for the applicants submits that the valuation of the suit was required to be done as per Section 4 of the Suit Valuation Act and Court fees was required to be assessed on the basis of Section 7(iv) of the Court Fees Act. This Court in 2001 (5) MPHT 374 (Kalyan Das & Ors. vs. Narayan Singh & Ors.) considered both the statutory provisions namely Section 4 of the Suit Valuation Act and Section 7 of the Court Fees Act. After due consideration, this Court opined that since the plaintiffs have claimed independent relief of declaration and in case of such prayer the suit is governed by Section 4 of Suit Valuation Act r/w Section 3 thereof. In that event, the plaintiffs were bound to value the suit land for the purpose of jurisdiction in accordance with its market value. Shri Awasthi submits that the Coordinate Benches of this Court in the case reported in 2002 (1) MPLJ 458 (Dharamraj Singh vs. Vaidya Nath & Ors.) and 2002 (1) MPLJ 489 (Shabbir Hussain & Ors. vs. Naade Ali & Ors.) opined that for seeking relief of declaration and injunction, the suit is to be valued “according to the amount at which the relief sought is valued”. It is argued that these two judgments delivered in Dharamraj Singh and Shabbir Hussain (supra) were rendered without considering the Section 4 of Suit Valuation Act and the earlier judgment of t