Courtney-Terrell, C.J.This is a first appeal from a decision of the Subordinate Judge of Gaya and is directed to be heard by a Special Bench because of a point of importance arising in connection with the levying of the court-fee on the plaint. The suit was brought by the plaintiff on a mortgage bond dated June 8, 1918, the claim being for Rs. 6,549-8-0 upon which the court-fee, as is admitted, would be a sum of Rs. 502. The suit was filed on the last day of limitation, having regard to extensions of time which the plaintiff was entitled to by reason of the occurrence of certain holidays. It was filed on June 1, 1931 with a court fee of Rs. 11. The plaintiff petitioned, when filing his plaint, that he be allowed time to file the deficiency on the court-fee stamp which deficiency amounted to Rs. 491-8 0 and he undertook to pay it on June 29. On June 29, the plaintiff had not "complied with the order for the payment &f the balance. The Subordinate Judge, who was in charge of the matter at the time, for some reason took an extremely lenient view of the failure on the part of the plaintiff to pay up the deficit. He directed that the Pleader was to comply with the order for payment by July 3, and on the same day the plaintiff paid up a further Rs. 50 and asked for one months time. The order by the Subordinate Judge was that the matter should be put up on July 3i as he had already directed When the 3rd July came, the Judge allowed a further extension until July 20. On July 20, the plaintiff was again not ready and the learned Subordinate Judge allowed him until the 31st of the same month. On the 31st, the plaintiff paid a further Rs. 30 and the Judge thereupon allowed him till August 10, to pay up the balance. When August 10, in his turn came, the plaintiff asked for time until to-morrow undertaking to pay on the following day Rs. 295 and the Judge allowed him until the following day. On the next day the plaintiff paid up the Rs. 295 and prayed for two weeks further time to deposit the balance, after the payments I have mentioned, which amounted to Rs. 116-8-0. On August 25, further excuses were advanced owing to an alleged difficulty in the purchase of stamps. The Judge allowed two further days time, directing payment of the deficit on August 27, and it, was not until August 27, that the plaintiff paid up the deficit of Rs. 116

2. Now the Court has a double function: it has its judicial function to hear and decide cases; it also acts as a collector of revenue, and its duty is to collect the revenue for the Government in the shape of court-fees according to the statutes provided, and in exercising that function, it has a discretion granted it to allow time. In the exercise of both of these functions Subordinate Courts are under the direction of the High Court. There is no doubt whatever that in this particular case the learned Judge, in exercising his discretion to grant time for the payment of the deficit court-fee, acted in a most undesirable manner and that undesirable exercise of his discretion undoubtedly prejudiced the defendant, although the defendant was no proper party to questions of revenue as between the plaintiff and the Government. It would have been quite possible for the defendant, who was injured by this repeated and unnecessary delay in the levying of the court-fee, to come to this Court and complain that in the exercise of its function as a revenue collector the Court had acted, in the matter prejudicially to the defendant and that the discretion vested in. the Court to grant adjournments had been improperly exercised. Had such an application been made, no doubt the Court would have, by virtue of its general powers of superintendence of lower Courts, checked the action of the Subordinate Judge. The suit was, after the payment of the deficit, heard on its merits and was decided against the defendant and the action of the Judge in the wrongful exercise of his discretion in permitting extensions of time for the payment of the court-fee is not a matter which concerns in any way the merits of the dispute in the suit which he had to try. It is contended, however, by the defendant that the plaint as originally filed without an adequate court-fee of Rs. 502 was no plaint at all, inasmuch as the original plaint was filed on the last day permitted by the Limitation Act after all the extensions had been granted. It is contended that when the deficit on the court-fee had actually been paid and the plaint had become, on the contention of the defendant a regular plaint, the period of limitation for the bringing of the suit had expired.

3. I am unaware of any provision which states that a plaint must be a plaint on which the whole of the leviable duty has been paid and that if the whole of the leviable duty has not been paid, the plaint is as though it had not been lodged at all. The argument is based in the main upon Section 6, Court Fees Act, which states:

...no document of any of the kinds specified as chargeable in Schedule 1 or Schedule 2 to this Act annexed shall be filed, exhibited or recorded in any Court of justice, or shall be received or furnished by any public officer, unless in respect of such document there be paid

the schedule court-fee. The Court Fees Act was passed in 1870 and Section 149, Civil Procedure Code, which was newly added in 1908. expressly provides:

149. Where the whole or any part of any fee prescribed for any document by the law for the time being in force relating to court fees has not been paid, the. Court may, in its discretion, at any stage, allow the person, by whom such fee is payable, to pay the whole or part, as the case may be, of such court-fee; and upon such payment the document, in respect of which such fee is payable, shall have the same force and effect as if such fee had been paid in the first instance.

4. The Judge therefore, at the very least clearly bad a discretion to allow the payment of the court-fee and when the court-fee had been paid, the plaint upon which it was paid must be deemed as having been filed on the day on which it was actually filed. The provision for the payment of court-fees has really nothing whatever to do with the litigation as such; it merely means that notwithstanding that a suit may be brought to compel payment of a debt due, the Court is not allowed to go into the matter and adjudicate upon its merits until the court-fee has been paid and the provisions for court-fees are merely provisions enforcing the payment of revenue by a denial of judicial process to a person who does not pay the provided fees.

5. Now in this case the learned Judge having a discretion to allow time did exercise his discretion. As I have indicated if the discretion were exercised in an outrageous fashion, it would be quite right for the person injured, that is to say the defendant, to come to this Court for relief; but the defendant took no such step and claims to be entitled in appeal to attack the order ultimately passed by the trial Court on the basis of the wrongful exercise of discretion by the Judge in allowing extensions of time for payment of the court-fee. That argument cannot be entertained; it has been attempted in similar cases. I may instance, for example, the case of a Court allowing an extension of time tinder Section 5, Limitation Act. It is not possible after the extension has been granted and after the case has been decided on the merits, for the Appellate Court to interfere with the final order upon the basis of a wrongful extension of time. That point was decided finally by this Court in Debi Charan Lal v. Mehdi Hussain 1 Pat. LJ 485 : 25 Ind Cas. 888 : AIR 1916 Pat. 317 : IPLW 209 : 20 CWN 1303 where the Chief Justice Sir Edward Chamier stated:

It is now settled by a long string of authorities that where a Court, after considering all the circumstances of the case, has come to the conclusion that sufficient cause has or has not been established for filing an appeal within time, the High Court in second appeal will not interfere.

6. The same reasoning is applicable to a Court sitting in first appeal, because the matter which was under discussion in that case was in connection with an extension of time given by the first Appellate Court for lodging the appeal. A second illustration is to be found where the first Appellate Court has exercised its discretion to admit further evidence. Let it be supposed that the first Appellate Court in exercising that discretion exercised it wrongfully and admitted further evidence which was relevant to the issues in dispute. It has been decided by this Court in Mt. Durga Tewary Vs. Ramrati Kuer and Another, that no interference in second appeal could take place. In that case the first Appellate Court had allowed the admission of further relevant evidence. A learned Judge of this Court, sitting singly in second appeal, was disposed to send the matter back to the lower Appellate Court wit h a direction to dispose of the appeal on the evidence on the record, ignoring the evidence which had. been in his view wrongully admitted though relevant to the issue. In Letters Patent Appeal, however, that view was dissented from and it was held that the lower Appellate Court having exercised its discretion to take, further evidence and there having been no steps taken by the other party to have that discretion interfered with by way of revision or otherwise, the evidence was rightly taken into account by the Judge in disposing of the case on its merits. I may instance a further possibility. A Judge might grant an adjournment of a case for a period, let us say of five years. At the end of that five years no steps having been taken by the party aggrieved to have such outrageous exercise of discretion corrected, the Judge takes up the hearing of the case upon its merits. It would not be possible for the Court of. Appeal to say that the case should not have been disposed of on its merits after the adjournment, although the Court might properly censure the trial Court having granted such, an outrageous adjournment. In short, these exercises of discretion by lower Courts, whether the trial Court or the first Appellate Court, must be remedied, if at all, at once by the superior Court on the application of the party aggrieved and it is too late if that party allows the cage to proceed and then seeks to interfere with the discretion in appeal.

7. A further point was argued in connection with the consideration of Order VII, Rule 11, Civil Procedure Code. That Order is somewhat unfortunately worded. It provides for the rejection of the plaint in certain cases, one of them specified in Clause (c) being as follows:

... where the relief claimed is properly valued, but the plaint is written upon paper insufficiently stamped, and the plaintiff on being required by the Court to supply the requisite stamp paper within a time to be fixed by the Court fails to do so.

8. It has been argued that the meaning of the Rule is that in such circumstances the Court is bound to grant an extension, in a case where the plaint is insufficiently stamped and the plaintiff asks for an; extension of time for filing the deficit. If the matter had been res Integra, I speaking for myself, would have been disposed to hold that that was not the meaning of the Rule and that the Rule necessarily implies first an application to the Court to grant an extension and does not imply the Court has no discretion to refuse the application. But a different view of the Rule has for long been held in this province and by the Courts of other provinces, and it has been thought, and it is still thought by many that the Rule necessarily implies an obligation on the part of the Court to grant an extension of time. Speaking for myself, I would not be disposed togive any decision which might express as a matter of ruling any dissent from that view, for it is manifestly a convenient Rule for the disposal of justice. It is a matter of some misfortune that the method of collection of revenue should be done through the Courts. An instance of the convenient working of the Rule on the interpretation that it involves an obligation to grant an extension is seen in the case of rent suits. In a great number of cases a tenant merely requires stimulation of legal proceedings to pay up the rent which may be due, and if the landlord could not sue without filing the whole of the court-fee on the first filing of the suit, the result might ultimately be a great deal worse for the tenant: it would be firstly a hardship on the landlord and in the event of the decision being against the tenant, the tenant would ultimately have to pay up the whole of the court-fee in addition to the debt which he owed to the plaintiff landlord. Therefore, no great injustice occurs. Indeed there is a convenience in allowing an extension of time. Nevertheless in applications for extension as regards the period of extension of time, Judges should have regard to the justice in each particular case. It might easily be that the proper extension of time in some cases might be a period as short as half an hour or even less and in some cases the extension might be greater and Judges should not automatically grant long extensions of time for the payment of court-fee because of the duty which is owed by the judicial authorities to protect the revenue. This, however, is not a matter which concerns the defendant; the matter is as between the Crown and the plaintiff. In this case the defendant was actually sued in time as provided by the Limitation Act. The fact that the plaint was not properly stamped does not in the least militate against its efficacy, although it might very likely happen that the Court might be prevented from entering into the merits of the suit and from making an order by way of judgment. So much for the point which led to the constitution of this Bench to hear this first appeal. As regards the merits of the appeal itself, that has become a matter of arrangement between the parties: they have consented to the disposal of the first appeal on the basis that the claim for interest made by the plaintiff is to be reduced to 12 per cent simple interest instead of the com-pound interest originally claimed. It will be for the office to work oat the amount of the decree in accordance with this compromise. The decree of the trial Court will accordingly be modified. The plaintiffs are entitled to the full costs of the lower Court as well as the full court fee and to the costs of the appeal.

Mohammad Noor, J.

9. I entirely agree with the judgment which is delivered by my Lord the Chief Justice. I would, however, wish to add that in my opinion Order VII, Rule 11, makes it compulsory for the Courts, before rejecting the plaint, to give some time to the plaintiff to make up the deficiency, however Short that time may be, and the Court cannot straightway reject the plaint without giving such time.

Manohar Lall, J.

10. I also agree. I wish to add that in my opinion the duty of this Court is only to interpret the plain meaning of the words deliberately used by the Legislature in Order VII, Rule 11, Clause (c) and not to guess the possible intention of the Legislature. When I consider this language, keeping in mind the well-known rule of construction that where there are two possible alternatives, the one more favourable to the subject must be preferred when a question of forfeiture of rights is involved (because all fiscal statutes should be strictly construed and in cases of doubts in favour of the subject). I find that on a fair construction the statute lays down two conditions which are conjunctive and not disjunctive which must both be satisfied before a plaint can be rejected. This view has been adopted by various other High Courts and is based upon a reasonable construction of the words used by the Legislature. The Courts before whom plaints are presented insufficiently stamped, are required to determine judicially the extent of time which must be given to make up the deficiency. It may be that in some cases a short time should be allowed, while in other cases the facts of the cases demand that a longer interval of time should be given to the plaintiff to make good the deficiency, but some time must be given before the plaint can be rejected.