In a  commercial suit filed before  the Additional Munsiff Court, Cherthala,  the defendant questioned  the maintainability of the suit on the grounds:

• In the plaint there are 11 reliefs and those reliefs are not separately valued.
• In the valuation portion in the plaint, the court fee of Rs.200/- is payable under Section 28 of the Kerala Court Fees and Suit Valuation Act, 1959 for the purpose of court fee and for the purpose of pecuniary jurisdiction, Rs.1000/- is payable.
• The Munsiff Court has no pecuniary jurisdiction to consider the plaint, as in the plaint itself in Paragraph 13, the plaintiffs themselves have stated that the property has a minimum market value of Rs.5 lakhs per cent at the time of transfer and Rs.17,26,292/- was shown as its sale consideration.

The Trial Court took note that the property will fetch minimum Rs.5 lakhs per cent, had appointed a Commissioner to ascertain the market value of the property. And, the Trial Court has held that the suit is not properly valued and the court fee paid is not correct.

The court has not gone the question of proper court fee to be paid and has only directed the Advocate Commissioner to value the property for the purpose of pecuniary jurisdiction to be decided. Because, even according to the plaint, the valuation will be much higher than 10,00,000/- under Section 11(2) of the Act, whereas the jurisdiction of the Munsiff court is upto 10 lakhs. The question of paying of court fee is to be decided only after filing written statement in a later stage after the court decides the pecuniary jurisdiction.

Accordingly the suit was dismissed.

The facts are taken from Mahesh Kumar R. Versus Thuravoor Padinjattumkara Vadakku Muri N.S.S. Karayogam NO.803 OP(C) 2430/2024 dated 26-03-2025.  Copy of judgment can be downloaded from here.