Sima Hotels and Resorts LTD. vs Dugal Projects Development Co. Pvt. Ltd.

U.D. Salvi, J.—Two of the orders, one dated 05.04.2010 rejecting the challenge to the jurisdiction of the Trial Court and other dated 20.04.2010 rejecting the application for amendment of the plaint particularly, valuation clause therein, passed by the IIIrd Additional Civil Judge, S.D., Margao are put under scanner in the present Civil Revision Application. Controversy arose as a result of an application for amendment of the valuation clause in the plaint moved by the plaintiff on 04.03.2010. The proposed amendment reads as under :

For the purpose of Court fees and jurisdiction the suit is valued at Rs.2,00,00,000/-. Accordingly, maximum court fee is paid herewith.

The plaintiff proposed this amendment on the ground that there was an error in incorporating the correct valuation of the subject matter of the suit, it being very large landed properties. The plaintiff contended that as a result of such error, the valuation of the suit in the valuation clause came to be written in numericals as 2,00,000/-, which ought to have been written as 2,00,00,000/-and such mistake was apparent from the fact that maximum court fee of Rs. 15,000/-was paid at the time of the institution of the said suit.

The grounds for the correction of valuation clause in the plaint were denied by the defendant with elaborate reply. According to the defendant, initial scoring out of the valuation in the original plaint sufficiently demonstrated that the plaintiff was conscious about the valuation of the suit, and as such could no longer raise the plea of an inadvertent error; and, therefore, from the valuation as disclosed in the plaint the Court of Senior Division at Margao ceased to have any jurisdiction and it ought to have returned the plaint to the plaintiff for presentation of the same before the competent court of law-CJJD, Canacona as provided under Order VII, Rule 10 of CPC.

Before disposing of the application for amendment, the learned IIIrd Additional CJSD, Margao considered the issue of jurisdiction. In doing so, the learned Civil Judge, considered the reliefs sought and the impact of the dimensions of the suit property on the valuation of the suit and arrived at a conclusion that the value of the suit property exceeded Rs.20 Lacs, and as such it continued to have jurisdiction to try the application for amendment of the valuation clause in the plaint. As regards the very merits of the amendment application, the learned Civil Judge believed in bonafides of the plaintiff in moving such application, and noticed no prejudice to the defendant in case of the application being allowed.

The learned Advocate Usgaonkar for the applicant (original defendant) inviting the attention of this Court to Section 15 and 16 of the CPC,1908 read with amended Section 20 of the Civil Courts'' Act, 1965, argued that on plain reading of the valuation clause in the original plaint i.e. valuation at Rs.2,00,000/-, the suit ought to have been instituted in the Court of CJJD, Canacona within the local limits of whose jurisdiction the property is situate; and, therefore, any attempt to amend the plaint to raise the valuation of the suit for the purposes of jurisdiction so as to bring the suit within the jurisdiction of the Court of CJSD, Margao should be put down heavily. To argument his submission, learned Advocate Usgaonkar placed reliance on the judgments reported in Lok Kalyan Samiti Vs. Jagdish Prakash Saini and Others, , Nizar Sadaruddin Khoja Vs. Vaibhav Construction and Others, , 1998 VII AD (Delhi) 325-Anil Goel Vs. Sardar Lal, Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Vs. Purple Creations Pvt. Ltd. and Others, and 1968 BLR 340 - Indumatiben Chimanlal Desai Vs. Union of India.

Learned Advocate Nitin Sardessai for the opponent (original plaintiff) countering the submissions made on behalf of the applicant, pointed out from the words of amended Section 20 subsection (2) of the Goa Civil Courts'' Act, 1965 that the learned Civil Judge, Senior Division, Margao has an inherent jurisdiction to entertain, try and dispose of all original suits and proceedings of a civil nature and, therefore, it is fallacious to submit that the CJSD, Margao did not have jurisdiction to entertain the amendment application. He further pointed out from the impugned orders that the learned CJSD, Margao did consider the aspect of valuation from the facts disclosed in the plaint and independently, concluded that it continued to have jurisdiction to entertain the said suit and no prejudice was likely to be caused to the defendant in the event of the amendment to the valuation clause as proposed. He supplemented his submissions with the judgments reported in 1993(2) Bombay Cases Reporter 479 - M/s. DKM Property Investments and others Vs. Tolentino Pereira and Ors., 2005(1) All M R 772 - Basant Kumar Jain vs. The Chief Executive Officers and Ors.

While closing his submissions, he added that the revision petition is not maintainable. Referring to the language of Rule 19 in Chapter IV of the Bombay High Court Appellate Side Rules, 1960 he further submitted that a single revision petition could not have been filed against two orders.

Parties were heard at length and the relevant record, the copies of which are found annexed to the petition, was perused.

The cases cited by the learned Advocate Usgaonkar in favour of his submissions negatively answer a pertinent issue as to whether a Court which does not have inherent jurisdiction on the basis of the averments made in the plaint as originally filed, can even entertain an application for amendment of the plaint, which if allowed, would bring the case within the jurisdiction of such Court. However, in the instant case, it can be seen from the reading of Subsection (2) of Section 20 of the Goa Civil Courts'' Act,1965 that the jurisdiction of Senior Civil Judge extends to all original suits and proceedings of a civil nature; and Subsection (3) of Section 20 of the said Act carves out there from pecuniary jurisdiction of Junior Civil Judges in reference to all original suits and proceedings of a civil nature. Section 21 of the said Act defines the local limits of jurisdiction of the Civil Judge, Senior or Junior Division.

Learned Advocate Nitin Sardessai for the opponent pointed out from para 12 in M/s. DKM Property Investment''s case (supra) that the Single Bench of this Court had rejected the argument that even when a suit is filed in the Court of CJSD, he cannot exercise jurisdiction in a suit if the pecuniary jurisdiction is below the limit prescribed by law as the outer limit for Junior Judges. Distinguishing the facts in the present case and those in DKM Property Investment''s case, learned Advocate Usgaonkar for the applicant submitted that the property in M/s. DKM Property Investment''s case was situate within the local limits of CJSD, Panaji, wherein the question of transfer of the suit to the CJJD, Panaji had arose, and in the instant case, the suit property was situate at Canacona within the local limits of CJJD, Canacona and not within the local limits of CJSD, Margao as prescribed u/s 21 of the Goa Civil Courts'' Act, 1965.

Even assuming the distinction as aforesaid to be

correct, it can be seen in the present case that the CJSD, Margao had taken a holistic view of the plaint and considered not only the valuation clause in the plaint but also the averments in the plaint revealing the impact of the dimensions of the suit property admeasuring 3,60,814 square meters on the valuation of the subject matter of the suit and came to the conclusion that it did have jurisdiction on the basis of the averments in the plaint as originally filed in the following terms :

The present suit was filed on 20/10/2009 as a Special Civil Suit bearing No.162/2009 i.e. after amendment to Section 20 of Goa Civil Court Amendment Act, 2009 thereby increasing the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Civil Judge, Junior Division from one lakh rupees to Rs. 20 lakhs. The record also shows that the valuation shown by the plaintiffs in the present case is 20,000/-without mentioning the amount in words however, the Court fees of Rs.15,000/-has been paid. Further the reliefs sought by the plaintiff in the present suit is that the plaintiffs are the exclusive owners of the suit property and for declaration of the Lease Agreement dated 25.11.1987 has determined in April, 1991 by virtue of termination/forfeiture of lease in pursuance of the notice dated 31/1/1991 addressed by the plaintiff to the defendant. The suit property admeasures 3,60,814 meters. From the Lease Agreement dated 30/1/1968 and other documents it is clear that the value of the suit property is more than Rs.20 lakhs. The application for amendment filed by the plaintiff is for correction of the valuation to Rs.2 Crores as such, in my opinion the plaintiff having paid maximum Court fees of Rs.15,000/-and the suit having been registered as Special Civil Suit it is clearly evident that this Court has jurisdiction to try the application for amendment of valuation of the suit.

In this context, it needs to be noted that for the purposes of valuation of suit not merely the valuation clause in the plaint but also all the facts revealed through the averments in the entire body of the plaint including the reliefs sought are required to be taken into account. What the applicant wants the Courts to look at is merely the valuation clause, which is not a correct approach. Consequently, Ld. CJSD actually had not allowed the amendment to the valuation clause so as to bring the case within its jurisdiction but had allowed such amendment to project realistic valuation of the suit. No jurisdictional error has, therefore, been committed by the learned CJSD, Margao.

Most material of the legal exception taken to the maintainability of this revision is arising out of the proviso to Section 115 of CPC, 1908. The proviso reads as under :

Provided that the High Court shall not, under this section, vary or reverse any order made, or any order deciding an issue, in the course of a suit or other proceeding, except where the order, if it had been made in favour of the party applying for revision, would have finally disposed of the suit or other proceedings.

It can very well be seen that if the order upholding the challenge to the jurisdiction was made by the learned CJSD, Margao in favour of the applicant/ revisionist, it would have returned the plaint to the opponent/ plaintiff for being presented before the competent Court of law - CJJD, Canacona vide para Nos. 3 and 4 of the reply to the application for amendment filed by the applicant. Such provision for return of the plaint finds place in Order VII, Rule 10 of CPC, 1908. Certainly, such order could not have amounted to "final disposal of the suit" as there is no adjudication conclusively determining the rights of the parties with regard to all or any of the matters in controversy in the suit. Surprisingly, learned Advocate Usgaonkar advocated a contrary view that the return of the plaint for presentation to the competent Court of Law amounted to final disposal of the suit or proceedings without much elaboration with reference to the law on issue. No weight, therefore, can be attached to the submissions of Ld. Advocate Usgaonkar in that regard. In the end, there is no difficulty in appreciating the merit of the submission that the present revision application is not maintainable in view of the proviso to the Section 115 of CPC, 1908.

As regards the tail end submission with reference to the Appellate Rules, it is sufficient to record that such hyper technical submission having no material impact on the merits of the legal question raised in the present application deserves to be rejected. In this view of the matter, this Civil Revision Application is dismissed in limine. No order as to costs.