Courtney-Terrell, C.J.This is an appeal from the judgment of the District Judge of Bhagalpur refusing to revoke letters of the administration with the will annexed granted on an application dated 15th September 1909. The testator was one Haran Chandra Bannerji. He had a wife Kailashkamini Debi by whom ho had a son Gurupada Bannerji. He lived at Bhagalpur having two houses there. In one he resided with his wife and son and the other he used for his business which was that of a silk dealer. He had another house at Benares where lived one Bhabanmohini by whom he had two sons, Sarat Chandra and Charu Chandra.

2. It is alleged by Preonath Bhattacharji who applies to revoke the letters of administration that this woman was Harans mistress and that her sons by him are illegitimate. Harans son Gurupada had a wife Narojini and Haran also had two sisters and the son of one of them is Preonath Bhattacharji. It appears that on 12th October 1890 he executed a will bequeathing his property. After this will, however, his son Gurupada Bannerji died on 4th March 1904 without issue and Haran was deprived of the assistance which Gurupada had rendered him in the conduct of his business. He therefore sent for his two sons Sarat and Charu from Benares to help him to carry on the business and on 20th July 1905 he executed a further will which is the subject of this case. By it he bequeathed all his property to Sarat with the reservation that if Charu should separate from Sarat he (Charu) should receive an allowance of Rs. 8 a month for life. He did not appoint an executor.

3. On 17th September 1907 Haran died and there is evidence that on 8th October 1907 Sarat agreed with the testators widow and with Narojini who was Gurupadas widow that in consideration of their refraining from contesting the will they should be allowed to live in the house at Banares and receive an allowance. On 10th December 1907 Sarat applied for letters of administration of the will of 1905 but he died on 21st January 1908 leaving a widow Sailabala and four minor sons, of whom Sailabala was, in the month of August 1909, appointed guardian. On 15th September 1909 Sailabala applied for a grant of letters of administration to Harans will and disclosed the existence of Kailashkamini and Narojini in respect of whom the Court ordered special citations. It appears, however, that the service of these citations was not effected. Charu appeared on the application and objected to the grant of letters of administration to Sailabala on various grounds the nature of which are not disclosed in this case but which appear to have included the allegation that the will was not genuine. The learned District Judge nevertheless after hearing the evidence made a grant of letters of administration to Sailabala and from this decision Charu appealed to the High Court at Calcutta. The case was, however, compromised, the order of the District Judge being varied by adding the name of Charu as a co-administrator with Sailabala. The present application is to revoke this grant of letters of administration.

4. The applicant Preonath Bhattacharji is the son of a sister of the testator Haran and the substantial point raised on this appeal is the contention that there was a material irregularity in the application for grant of letters of administration by reason of the fact that the sister and the applicant her son were not served with citations. He further alleges that Bhubanmohini, the mother of Sarat and Charu was not the lawful wife of the testator, that Sarat and Charu are illegitimate sons and that he had a reversionary interest in the estate of the deceased which entitled him to the citation. He insists that as a reversionary heir he was a necessary party to the hearing of the application and that the proceedings having been materially defective he is entitled to have the letters of administration revoked before going into any objections which he may have to the genuineness of the will. If he is right in his contention that the proceedings were defective he is entitled to have the letters of administration revoked with out at this stage attacking the genuineness of the will: see Akhileswari Dasi and Another Vs. Hari Charan Mirdha and Another, .

5. The Probate and Administration Act of 1881, since replaced by the Succession Act of 1925, was applicable to this will and the applicant relies on Section 50 of that Act and particularly on Ill. (b) appended to that section, This section states:

The grant for probate or letters of administration may be revoked or annulled for just cause.

6. This clearly does not mean that it is left to the discretion of the Court to revoke the letters of administration when a just case is made out but merely that the letters of administration may or may not be revoked according to whether a just cause is or is not established. In the explanation a just cause1 is made out when it is proved that the proceedings to obtain the grant were defective in substance and Ill. (b) states: The grant was made without citing parties who ought to have been cited. Now! it has long been well established that a person having a reversionary interest although such interest be inalienable and dependent upon remote contingencies is nevertheless substantially interested in the protection or devolution of the estate and as such is entitled to appear and be heard in a probate proceeding: set e.g. Brindaban Chandra Shaha v. Sureshwar Shaha Pramanick [1909] 10 C.L.J. 263. It is true that the interests of Harans sisters could not arise until the death of his widow and minor sons yet nevertheless it was an interest which entitled them to special citation and certainly the widow Kailashkamini who was ordered to be cited should also have had notice of the proceedings and as I have observed service upon her was not effected.

7. It was strenuously argued by Mr. Das that Section 50 and the illustration are not applicable to special citations. He referred to Section 22 of the Act of 1881 which is as follows:

Letters of administration with the will annexed shall not be granted to any legatee other than a universal or residuary legatee until a citation has been issued and published in the manner hereinafter mentioned calling on the next-of-kin to accept or refuse letters of administration.

8. From this he argued that letters of administration might be granted to a universal or residuary legatee, as Sarat was in this case, without calling upon the next-of-kin and he further contended that next-of-kin meant merely persons entitled to distribution on intestacy which would not have included Harans sisters or their sons. This section appears to me, however, merely intended to protect the possible right of the next of kin to effect the administration of the estate where no executor has been appointed and where the application is made by a mere specific legatee and it does not relieve an applicant for letters of administration even though he be a universal or residuary legatae from the obligation to call upon reversioners and to to give them an opportunity of protecting their vested interests in th9 reversion.

9. The casa is, however, not concluded by a determination of this point for if it cm be shown that the appellant was fully aware of the circumstances of the will and of the application for letters of administration aid tint he stood by and acquiesced in their grant he cannot now be heard on his objection and it is said that the evidence is sufficient to convince the Court firstly that Kailashkamini was fully aware and acquiesced and secondly, that the appellant Preonath Bhattacharji was equally cognizant and to this point I will now address myself.

10. It is true that the onus lies upon the objector to prove that Kailashkamini and Preonath Bhattacharji were cognizant of the proceedings on the application and that their conduct in refraining from opposing the application for letters of administration amounted to acquiescence. Now Preonath appears not to have been on terms of social intimacy with the testator. Preonath was a "Debal" Brahmin and was a priest at Kalighat in Calcutta and the testator belonged to a class of Brahmins who looked down upon such parsons and after the testators death he appears to have bean on bad terms with Sarat. The testator had long been on bad term3 with Kailashkamini his wife and Preonath has long been a close friend of the widow. She frequently stayed with him at his house at Kalighat and he came to live with her at the Benares house. The first will made by Haran in 1890 gave all his property to Gurupada and the other sons and the widow got nothing. After the death of Haran, Sarat came to an agreement with her the precise terms of which are not known but it undoubtedly included an obligation upon Kailashkamini and Narojini Debi not to assert any legal right of inheritance in consideration of a monthly allowance to be granted to them by Sarat and they were allowed to live at the Benares house. It is perfectly clear that Kailashkamini and Narojini knew all about the will made in 1905. Preonath in his evidence although he professed to know all about the relationship between Haran and his sons and the fact that Kailashkamini did not get on well with Haran and the further fact that by his first will Haran left nothing to Kailashkamini, professes to have known nothing at that time of the arrangement between Sarat and Kailashkamini in 1907. He pretends to have believed that Kailashkamini granted a lease of the Bhagalpur houses to Sarat.

11. It appears that in 1915 at a time when Kailashkamini was living with Preonath at Kalighat the allowance which Sarat had agreed to give her had fallen into arrears and Kailashkamini brought a suit. In the course of that suit she was examined on commission and the examination took place at Preoniths house. It is quite incredible that Preonath was not thoroughly aware of what the suit was about and his knowledge of the will and of the application for letters of administration must have bean acquired long prior to this date. It appears that Sailabala and Charu ultimately had to bring a suit against him to get him out of the Benares house. The suit for possession of the house was decreed in 1924 and Preonath defended it on the allegation that Charu was illegitimate and that the will was not genuine and he pretends that it was not until 1924 that he came to know of the will. He admits that ha was well acquainted with one Saroda Prasad Mukharji, a pleader of Bhagalpur who himself had given evidence in support of the will in the proceedings for letters of administration by Sailabala. It is a curious fact that in his evidence in this case Preonath states expressly that he was on good terms with the deceased and if this be so it is incredibla that ha should not have known of the will. It is also a curious fact that the citation to Kailashkamini directed by the learned District Judge was addressed to the care of Babu Preonath Bhattacharji at his Calcutta address although it appears from the endorsement by the peon that he was told at that house that she did not reside there. In my opinion the finding of the learned District Judge that Preonath was aware of the will and the application for letters of administration is entirely justified.

12. It is, however, argued that since the appeal from the decision granting letters of administration was compromise, the case falls within the decision of Shyama Charan Baisya v. Prafulla Sundari Gupta [1915] 21 C.L.J. 657 Saroda Kanto Dass v. Gobindo Mohan Das [1910] 12 C.L.J. 91 and the well-known English decision by Lord Penzance in Wytcherley v. Andrews [1871] 2 P. & D. 327 and it is argued that a reversioner cannot be bound by the effect of a compromise to which he was not a party. To my mind these decisions have no application. The decision of the District Judge of Bhagalpur granting letters of administration was given after all the evidence had been placed before the Court. The compromise decision did not materially vary the administration order. It merely added Charu as a co-administrator with Sailabala and altered the proportions in which Sarat and Charu were to share the estate which in any event was to go to them and to them alone.

13. In the decisions referred to the compromise was to withdraw from the effect of the Court the determination of the genuineness of the will. In this case no such withdrawal took place and although the order was varied, as I have said, the proceedings for the grant by the District Judge were undisturbed by the compromise. In my opinion it is quite clear that Kailashkamini, the widow, Narojini, the daughter-in-law and Preonath Bhattacharji, the nephew, were all aware of the circumstances and stood by knowing that the will was unassailable. I have read carefully through the evidence given by Preonath in these proceedings and am satisfied that the learned District Judge was right in declining to believe him. Moreover the learned Judge had the advantage of hearing the evidence and forming a better opinion than we have of his veracity.

14. The result is that in my opinion this appeal should be dismissed. The pleaders fee in the Court below was calculated at a sum of Rs. 598-4-0. It is agreed that this is a mistake and that the amount allowed for pleaders fee should be Rs. 80 and the decree will be modified by reducing the sum of Rs. 598-4-0 to Rs. 80. The appellant will pay the costs of the respondent in this Court. Hearing fee 5 gold mohurs.

Ross, J.

I agree.