Bombay HC Settles Court Fees Row: Rs. 250 Per Petitioner, Not Per Petition, in Joint Article 226/227 Writs Where Individual Relief Is Sought
Justice Sandeep Marne lays down a cause-of-action test to determine whether court fees under the Maharashtra Court Fees Act must be paid per petitioner or per petition in joint writ petitions.
A practicing advocate who had appeared for petitioners in a disposed writ petition moved an interim application before the Bombay High Court complaining that the Registry was demanding court fees of Rs. 250 per petitioner, rather than a flat Rs. 250 per petition, in filings under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution. Justice Sandeep V. Marne, sitting singly, reserved the matter on 11 August 2026 and pronounced the order on 25 August 2026. After surveying decisions of the Supreme Court and several High Courts, the Court declined to accept that the word “Petition” in Entry 1(f)(ii) of Schedule II of the Maharashtra Court Fees Act, 1959 invariably means one flat fee regardless of how many petitioners are joined. It settled the position by laying down a cause-of-action test: court fees are payable per petitioner when individual causes of action are espoused in a joint petition, and a single set of court fees suffices only when a genuinely common or same cause of action is pursued.
The Dispute Before the Court
The applicant, Mr. Satyam A. Surana, appeared in person. He had filed the interim application after the petitioners in the main writ petition — which had since been disposed of — were directed to pay court fees at Rs. 250 per petitioner even though a single order was being challenged. He sought a refund of what he characterised as excess court fees, and also asked the Court to issue directions to the Registry to follow a uniform practice.
His complaint was two-fold. First, the Registry lacked a consistent approach when numbering petitions filed under Articles 226 or 227. Second, Entry 1(f)(ii) of Schedule II of the Court Fees Act prescribed a fixed fee on an “Application or Petition” presented to the High Court, and the statutory language contained no words such as “per Petitioner” or “for each Petitioner.” He argued that the Registry was therefore acting without statutory authority when it insisted on fees linked to the count of petitioners.
Ms. Leena Patil appeared for the High Court through its Registrar General. She contended that the Registry followed a uniform system of fees per petitioner in all Article 226 or 227 filings, supported by a Division Bench judgment of the Nagpur Bench in Santosh Narayan Gaikwad and another v. The Registrar of the Hon'ble High Court of Judicature at Bombay and another (Writ Petition No. 3634 of 2011, decided 30 November 2016). That judgment, she said, had been circulated across all Benches of the Court.
The Statutory Entry and the Competing Positions
Entry 1(f) of Schedule II of the Maharashtra Court Fees Act, 1959 prescribes fixed fees for applications or petitions presented to the High Court. Sub-entry (ii), applicable to petitions for enforcement of fundamental rights under Part III of the Constitution through Article 226, or for exercise of supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227, fixes the fee at Rs. 250. The heading of Schedule II uses the expression “Fixed Fees.”
Mr. Surana argued from plain language: the entry attaches the fee to the “Application or Petition,” not to the petitioner. If the legislature had intended a per-petitioner levy, it would have used expressions such as “for each Petitioner” or “for every person joining the Petition.” Their conscious absence, he submitted, was determinative. He also relied on the principle that a fiscal or taxing statute must be interpreted strictly, citing Supreme Court judgments on that proposition. He further pointed out that an amendment by Maharashtra Act X of 2018 — which would raise the fee in this category from Rs. 250 to Rs. 1,250 — had been enacted and published in the Gazette but had not yet been brought into force, showing that fee quantum is a legislative, not interpretive, question.
He placed reliance on a Coordinate Bench decision of this Court in Machindra Rambhau Chavan & Ors. v. M/s. Ahmednagar Forging Ltd. & Another (2002 SCC OnLine Bom 1316), where a single fixed fee of Rs. 250 was held payable on the petition irrespective of the number of petitioners, and on the Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Umesh Chand Vinod Kumar and others v. Krishi Utpadan Mandi Samiti, Bharthana and another (1983 SCC OnLine All 638), as well as on the Calcutta High Court in Parul Debnath & Ors. v. Union of India and Others (2006 SCC OnLine Cal 25).
How the Court Reasoned Through the Precedents
Justice Marne worked through the case law methodically, beginning with the Supreme Court. In Mota Singh and Others v. State of Haryana and others (AIR 1981 SC 484), the Apex Court had held that where different truck owners — having no jural relationship with each other — joined together in a common petition, each had his own independent cause of action arising from an individual tax liability, and each was accordingly liable to pay court fees as though he had filed a separate petition.
The Division Bench of this Court in Govindrao Atmaramji Warjurkar and another v. The State of Maharashtra (AIR 1976 Bom 383) had addressed a common petition filed by two petitioners under Article 226 challenging an Ordinance. Finding that each petitioner was independently aggrieved in the matter of his own separate business, the Court held that the petition was, in substance, two petitions combined into one, and directed deposit of court fees accordingly per petitioner.
In Machindra Rambhau Chavan, the Court noted, 227 complainants were challenging a single order of the Industrial Court in a singular complaint. They were not expected — and indeed were not permitted — to file 227 separate petitions. The cause of action was common, not individual. Justice Marne clarified that the broad observations in that judgment about the term “Petition” must be read in that factual context and could not be elevated into an absolute rule favouring a per-petition fee in every case.
The Division Bench in Santosh Narayan Gaikwad (Nagpur Bench) had itself drawn the distinction clearly: a general practice note could not compel per-petitioner fees in every case involving an association or registered body. However, the same judgment held that when an association of individuals raises the grievance of each member and the benefit of the order would be available to each member individually, the Registry may insist on fees per member. Justice Marne found that this judgment provided a complete answer to the application.
Turning to the Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court in Umesh Chand Vinod Kumar, the Court observed that the Full Bench had principally decided the maintainability of a joint petition. On the question of court fees, the Full Bench had held: where a single writ petition by more than one person is validly maintainable, only one set of court fees is payable; where a single writ petition is not validly maintainable but several persons join in it nonetheless, the principle in Mota Singh applies and each petitioner pays separately. Justice Marne held that this judgment could not be read to support a blanket proposition that fees are always per-petition in Article 226 or 227 matters.
The Calcutta High Court in Parul Debnath, where 130 persons had jointly filed a petition and paid court fees for 130 writ petitions, had observed that the question of payment of court fees is connected with the service wanted and not the benefits expected to flow from the orders. Justice Marne read those observations as directed at the specific issue before that Court — whether 130 persons were entitled to maintain a joint petition — and declined to extract from them a general principle against per-petitioner fees.
The Court also considered decisions from the Patna High Court in Shivshankar Pandey v. Union of India (2002 SCC OnLine Pat 944), the Jharkhand High Court Division Bench in Binod Kumar v. State of Jharkhand (2022 SCC OnLine Jhar 107), the Karnataka High Court in M/s Gerb Vibration Control System Private Limited and others v. Assistant Labour Commissioner and Ors. (2012 SCC OnLine Kar 8665), and the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Amaravati Rajdhani v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2024 SCC OnLine AP 1800). These decisions, taken together, reflected a consistent position: where individually accruing benefits would flow from an order, separate court fees are payable per petitioner even if a joint petition is permitted as a matter of convenience.
The Court's Analytical Framework
Justice Marne rejected Mr. Surana's argument that the absence of the words “per Petitioner” from Entry 1(f)(ii) was a deliberate legislative choice enabling multiple petitioners to pay a single fee. The Court reasoned that the legislature did not use those words because, ordinarily, a petition in the High Court is filed by one petitioner. The facility of filing a joint petition by multiple petitioners is a judicial recognition — not a facility created by the Court Fees Act itself. Because the Act does not contemplate joint petitions, it unsurprisingly does not address how fees should be levied in such cases. The answer to that question must therefore come from the nature of the cause of action, not from the textual absence of specific words.
The Court equally rejected the strict-interpretation argument. Strict construction of a fiscal statute resolves ambiguities in favour of the taxpayer against the State. But if that principle were applied here, the Court would have to insist on separate petitions by each petitioner to ensure that prescribed fees were paid. Permissibility to file a common petition does not flow from the Court Fees Act; it flows from judicial discretion. Extending that convenience to defeat revenue was not what strict construction demanded.
Justice Marne then articulated the governing test in concrete terms. Where a petition involves a common or same cause of action — for instance, ten plaintiffs in a civil suit jointly petitioning under Article 227 of the Constitution against an interlocutory order that binds them all, or a hundred workers challenging a single adverse award of an industrial adjudicator on a common reference — a single set of court fees is sufficient. Where a petition is filed to challenge erroneous eligibility criteria in a public employment advertisement by ten individual candidates, or by pensioners each claiming individual pension benefits, each petitioner is espousing a separate individual cause of action through a common filing. In those cases, fees must be paid per petitioner.
The Court illustrated further: a petition against a Municipal Corporation for failure to prevent unauthorised construction on public amenity land, involving no individual benefit to any petitioner, warrants one set of court fees. A petition by members of a cooperative housing society seeking disqualification of a managing committee, where no member receives an individual benefit from success, similarly warrants one set of court fees. By contrast, where success in the petition entitles each petitioner personally to a specific right or benefit — such as eligibility to apply for employment, regularisation in service, or payment of higher pension — the cause of action is individual and separate fees are payable.
The key question in every case, the Court said, was whether “one cause of action” or “individual causes of action relating to multiple persons” were being espoused through the petition.
Application to the Facts of the Main Petition
The main writ petition had been filed by eleven named individuals — Rohinton Adi Zaiwala, Rohit Omprakash Bahuguna, Sujoy Neogi, Prashant N. Jadhav, Divyesh Pravinkumar Mehta, Trivedi Jaykumar Jagdishbhai, Pinkal Mukundbhai Thakor, Thakar Dhirenkumar Ashvinbhai, Chaudhary Samar Nath, Narendra Maruti Nadkarni and Yogeshkumar Dipakkumar Panchal. The petition had not been filed through an association; these were individual petitioners. Their claim was for payment of higher pension and pensionary benefits including arrears. Had they succeeded, each would have received pension benefits individually. Justice Marne accordingly held that each was required to pay separate court fees under Entry 1(f)(ii) of Schedule II of the Court Fees Act. The Registry's insistence on Rs. 250 per petitioner was correct on those facts.
Order
Justice Marne disposed of the interim application and clarified the position as follows. Under Entry 1(f)(ii) of Schedule II of the Maharashtra Court Fees Act, 1959, court fees on a petition filed under Articles 226 or 227 of the Constitution of India are payable per petitioner and not per petition when individual causes of action are being espoused through a joint petition, or when the outcome of the petition would individually benefit each petitioner. A single set of court fees is payable only where the same or a common cause of action is sought to be espoused by multiple petitioners, whether filing individually or through an association.