JUDGMENT Henry Richards, C.J. and Pramada Charan Banerji, J.
1. The facts connected with this and the connected application are shortly as follows:--A suit was brought by the plaintiff for dower and also to set aside certain deeds executed by her deceased husband. A question as to the sufficiency of court fees arose, and eventually the court made a decree in the plaintiff's favour conditional upon her paying an extra court fee of Rs. 20, within a week. If this extra court fee was not paid the suit was to stand dismissed. What we have just now stated was all embodied in and was part of the decree itself. Unfortunately (it is said through the negligence of the plaintiff's pleader) she did not get proper information, with the result that she deposited Rs. 10 only within the time allowed. The defendants then made an application for execution of the decree on the ground that the decree was now in their favour, the deposit of Rs. 20 not having been made as provided in the decree. The plaintiff sought in vain to be allowed to pay in the extra Rs. 10. The court doubted that it had jurisdiction to extend time and rejected the application for extension of time. The plaintiff comes here in revision and contends that the court had jurisdiction and it ought to have exercised it. This Court always feels great difficulty in interfering with the discretion of the courts below on matters of discretion. But there seems to be a more formidable objection to the present application, namely, that once the term about depositing the Rs. 20 was embodied in the decree, the court itself, even if it desired, had no jurisdiction to alter its own decree save on an application for review of judgment under Section 114, read with Order XLVII, Rule 1. The case of Naik Ram v. Bhagwan Chand (1917) 15 A. L. J., 511 is cited. This was a decision of a single Judge and the judgment consists of a single line. The circumstances were no doubt in principle the same as in the present case. The judgment of the Court is:--"The court had undoubtedly jurisdiction to extend the time." It has been over and over again held in pre-emption suits, where the decree itself provides that the pre-emptor is to have possession conditional upon his paying the preemption money into court within a specified time, and that upon his failure to do so the suit-shall stand dismissed, that the court has no jurisdiction to extend the time. The ground for these decisions has always been that the court has no jurisdiction to interfere with its own decree save in the manner we have mentioned above. There is no distinction between a pre-emption decree and any other decree which embodies certain conditions and provides for the suit being dismissed if those conditions are not complied with. The only exception is that of mortgage decrees: time can be extended in mortgage decrees by virtue of the provisions of Order XXXIV. We reject the application, but under the circumstances we make no order as to costs.
2. We may here mention that we think that it would have been better had the court, after determining that the extra fee was payable, ordered the fee to be paid within a certain time, and delayed passing its decree until that time had expired.