Sardar Sambhaji Angre Since Deceased through Shri Gurumurthy Vs H.H. Maharaja Jyotiraditya and Ors.

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920-CHS1382-15.DOC

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ATUL

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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY ORDINARY ORIGINAL CIVIL JURISDICTION CHAMBER SUMMONS NO. 1382 OF 2015

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IN

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CHAMBER ORDER (L) NO. 42 OF 2015 IN

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SUIT NO. 1861 OF 1984

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Sardar Sambhaji Angre, since deceased through …Plaintiffs
Shri Gurumurthy
Versus
H.H. Maharaja Jyotiraditya & Others…Defendants

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Ms. Sheetal Shah, for the Plaintiffs.
Mr. Praveer Shetty, i/b RES Legal, for Defendants Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 &
7.

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CORAM: G.S. PATEL, J DATED: 18th October 2016

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PC:-

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1. Heard Ms. Shah for the Plaintiff.

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2.This Chamber summons is directed against an order dated
24th March 2015 passed by the Prothonotary & Senior Master
refusing to re-transfer this partition Suit from the Bombay City Civil
Court back to the High Court on the Plaintiff’s application that the

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subject matter of the Suit exceeds the pecuniary jurisdiction of the
Bombay City Civil Court.

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3.A short background is necessary. The dispute pertains to part
of the holdings of the Scindia family, the royal family of Gwalior. For
several centuries, this was a prominent royal family possessed of
very considerable holdings, both immovable and movable. The
present action is concerned only with the movables. I do not think
there is any possibility of a dispute or controversy that these
movables are correctly described by the Plaintiffs as being beyond
value: antiques, antiquities, heirlooms, imported artefacts, artworks
and so on.

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4.The Plaintiff No. 1A, Mr. S. Gurumurthy, claims to be an
executor of a Will of the original Plaintiff, Rajmata Vijayaraje
Scindia, the widow of late Jivajirao Scindia, the former Maharaja of
Gwalior. There were two executors. The first was Sardar
Sambhajirao Angre, distantly related to the Scindia family and said
to have been close to Rajmata Vijayaraje; the second is Mr.
Gurumurthy, a person of some repute in the fields of finance and
journalism. The original Defendants were the children of the
original Plaintiff, i.e, Jivajirao and Vijayaraje’s son, Madhavrao,
since deceased, three married daughters, and the children of
another daughter who died before Vijayaraje Scindia.

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5.Madhavrao died in a airplane accident; his son, Jyotiraditya
Scindia; married daughter Chitrangada Raje Singh; and widow

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Madhavi Raje Madhavrao Scindia, have been joined. They are the
only ones opposing this application.

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6.There are, of course, allegations and counter-allegations of
collusion, but these are entirely irrelevant, in my view, to the present
issue, one of transfer. I do not, for instance, see how the pecuniary
jurisdiction of any Court can ever turn on an allegation of collusion.

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7.Jivajirao died intestate. He had six heirs: the original Plaintiff,
Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia; their son, Madhavrao; and four
daughters, Padma Raje, Usha Raje, Vasundhara Raje, Yashodhara
Raje. Padma Raje died in the mid-1960’s, and her heirs are joined.

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8.Vijayaraje filed this suit seeking partition of the movables in
Jivajirao’s estate. There is annexed to this plaint, and there is also no
doubt about this, a very long list of movables of which partition is
sought: the list spans over 350 pages. Some of the items in the HUF
list alone are individually in excess of Rs. 1 crore. The list includes
objects big and small – glass and crystal chandelier, artworks
(entire galleries of artworks), vases, paintings, crockery, cutlery,
Victorian and Jacobine antique furniture, textiles and so on. It is
impossible to put a value on each of these items. Some of them are,
to put it simply, probably beyond any ready monetary reckoning.
Vijayaraje said as much in her plaint and paid the full Court Fee
then payable on this suit.

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9.With the increase in the pecuniary jurisdiction of the Bombay
City Civil Court, this Suit was transferred to that Court. The

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920-CHS1382-15.DOC

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Plaintiff then applied for a re-transfer to this Court. The Bombay
City Civil Court apparently told the Plaintiff to make a necessary
application before the Prothonotary & Senior Master, which is how
the Plaintiff came to file Chamber Order No. 42 of 2015 in this
Court.

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10.Unusually in such matters, this Chamber Order was very
heavily contested. I find from the record that before the
Prothonotary & Senior Master, Defendants Nos. 1A and 2, i.e., Mr.
Jyotiraditya and Madhavi Raje actually engaged Senior Counsel to
appear for them, something that almost never happens. The
Prothonotary’s order is a 12-page order recording submissions on
both sides.

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11.I am unable to tell what possible objection the contesting
Defendants could have had for re-transfer of the Suit. They appear
to have contended that individual items were not valued; that the
valuation of each item was not precisely stated; and, therefore, that
there should be no transfer. The Prothonorary & Senior Master
seems to have accepted this by saying:

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“However, aforesaid issue with regard to valuation is
required to be adjudicated only after Suit is valued for the
purpose of court fees and jurisdiction by appropriate
proceeding if taken out by the Plaintiff before the
appropriate Court. In that view of the matter, Chamber
Order is not tenable before me. Accordingly, I pass
following:

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O R D E R

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920-CHS1382-15.DOC

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Chamber Order is rejected with no order as to costs.

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Plaintiff to take out appropriate Application for
amendment of plaint as per law before the appropriate
Court.”

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12.I must confess that I am unable to understand the precise
purport of the operative portion of this order. When the
Prothonotary says that the issue regarding valuation is to be
adjudicated only after the Suit is valued by an appropriate
proceeding before the appropriate Court, I have very little idea what
is expected of the Plaintiff or, for that matter, me, assuming mine is
the ‘appropriate Court’. What might be the form of those
“appropriate proceedings”? Which might be the “appropriate
Court”? I rather suspect this is a classic case of putting the horse
before the cart. It is not the case of any of the Defendants that any
part of this estate is less than Rs. 1 crore, the outer limit of the
Bombay City Civil Court’s jurisdiction. Any such submission would
have to be rejected out of hand as ex-facie untenable and bordering
on the absurd. Nobody in his senses believes that this estate of
movables is worth less than Rs. 1 crore. In all probability it runs into
triple digit crores, very possibly more.

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13.What the contesting Defendants seem to say is that this is all
very well, but the Plaintiff must value every item. In short, the
executor of an estate must engage in what is very likely a futile
exercise in getting items valued although the original Plaintiff has
paid the maximum ad valorem court fees on this Suit.

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14.If it comes to question of convenience, there is a
Testamentary Petition already pending in this Court regarding a
later Will of the Plaintiff, Mrs. Vijayaraje Scindia and which is
propounded by her daughters, Defendants Nos. 3 to 5. That trial is
proceeding before me. At the same time, the executors who have
now come in place propound an earlier Will in respect of which they
have adopted proceedings in the Delhi High Court. Given all of this,
I am unable to understand why anyone would think it more
convenient to have this matter separated and kept in the Bombay
City Civil Court, or why there should be such an objection.

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15.I believe the Prothonotary & Senior Master lost site of the
fact and may have materially misdirected himself on the question of
valuation. In a matter such as this, it is not a question of seeing
whether a specific number is mentioned in the Plaint. Regard must
be had to the averments in the Plaint and the manner in which the
claim is described. Seen from this perspective, and combined with
the fact that nobody has questioned that the Plaintiff has paid the
maximum ad valorem court fee on the Suit, there is no room for
questioning the monetary valuation of the Plaint or of saying that it
is less than Rs. 1 crore and, therefore, should remain with the
Bombay City Civil Court. The Bombay City Civil Court cannot hear
the Suit valued beyond its pecuniary jurisdiction. In any case, once
it is seen on any reasonable interpretation of the Suit that the Suit is
valued at an amount of more than Rs. 1 crore and that the estate
sought to be partitioned cannot be reasonably be said to be of less
than Rs. 1 crore, no question arises of allowing the Bombay City
Civil Court to continue with that suit. That would be entirely
without jurisdiction.

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920-CHS1382-15.DOC

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16.Having regard to these circumstances, the Chamber
Summons is made absolute in terms of prayer clauses (a), (b) and
(c). The delay in filing the Chamber Summons is condoned. The
order dated 24th March 2015 passed by the Prothonotary & Senior
Master of this Court is set aside. The Prothonotary & Senior Master
is directed to immediately issue directions to re-transfer Suit No.
1861 of 1984 to this Court.

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17.List the matter for compliance on 18th November 2016 on the
supplementary board.

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(G. S. PATEL, J.)

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18th October 2016

Sardar Sambhaji Angre Since Deceased through Shri Gurumurthy v. H.H. Maharaja Jyotiraditya and Ors.

Case brief

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Sardar Sambhaji Angre Since Deceased through Shri Gurumurthy v. H.H. Maharaja Jyotiraditya and Ors.

Case brief

What is this about?

What did the court decide?

What the court decided

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