IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE, ANDHRA PRADESH AT HYDERABAD (Special Original Jurisdiction) PRESENT: THE HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE C.V.NAGARJUNA REDDY FRIDAY, THE TWENTIETH DAY OF NOVEMBER, TWO THOUSAND NINE CIVIL REVISION PETITION NO.4437 OF 2008 Between: D.Bhaskara Rao. … Petitioner/defendant And N.V.Subrahmanyam. … Respondent/Plaintiff. Counsel for the petitioner: Sri S.Subba Reddy. Counsel for the respondent: Sri K.S.R.Murthy. This Court made the following: ORDER:- This is a frivolous piece of litigation, where the petitioner, who is the tenant and defendant in O.S.No.973 of 2003 on the file of the III Additional Senior Civil Judge, Visakhapatnam, has taken a peculiar plea that copies of purported rent receipts said to have been issued by the respondent-plaintiff require stamp duty and that since they were not duly stamped, they were not admissible in evidence. The respondent-landlord filed the abovementioned suit for eviction of the petitioner and for recovery of arrears of rent. There was a dispute between the parties as to the quantum of rent. In order to substantiate the plea of the respondent, he sought to file documents, which were copies of purported rent receipts issued by him to the petitioner. The petitioner raised an objection to the admissibility of the said receipts on the ground that under Article 53 of Schedule-I of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 every receipt shall be affixed with stamp of the value of Re.1/-. The petitioner pleaded that as the receipts, which were sought to be marked by the respondent-plaintiff, were admittedly not stamped, they are inadmissible in evidence. In my considered view, this objection is preposterous because the respondent claimed to be the author of the receipts, which were allegedly given to the petitioner in token of receiving the rents. Therefore, the respondent can only retain the copies of the receipts, which he had given to the petitioner. Hence, it is not expected of the respondent to affix stamps to the copies of original receipts, which are supposed to be available with the petitioner. Article 53 of Schedule-I can be pressed into service only in a case where the respondent wanted to mark the original receipts and not copies of original receipts, which he had retained in proof of his having passed on the receipts. At the hearing, Sri S.Subba Reddy, learned counsel for the petitioner, placed reliance on the judgments of the Supreme Court in Jupudi Vs. Pulavarthi[1] and Bipin Shantilal Panchal Vs. State of Gujarat[2]. Having carefully gone through the said judgments, I am of the view that they have absolutely no application to the facts of the present case. In the first mentioned judgment, the Apex Court held that a copy of the purported agreement was not admissible in evidence and under Section 36 of the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 a copy of the agreement cannot be stamped and admitted as secondary evidence in proof of contents of a document, which is unstamped or insufficiently stamped. In the latter mentioned case, the Supreme Court reiterated the view often expressed by it that the trial courts shall decide on the admissibility of the documents as and when objections thereto were raised and detailed orders were passed either upholding or over-ruling such objections. In my considered view, neither of the two judgments have any relevance on the issue raised in this case because the only objection raised by the petitioner before the lower court that the copy of the purported rent receipt was not stamped. As noted above, the petitioner is expected to be the custodian of the original documents. Therefore, the respondent had merely produced the copies of the receipts in order to substantiate his contention about the quantum of rent. The learned counsel for the petitioner further submitted that since the respondent has not called upon the petitioner to produce the original documents before seeking to file carbon copies, the same cannot be admitted in evidence. I am afraid, this contention cannot be permitted to be raised for the first time in the revision, because, admittedly such a contention was not raised by the petitioner before the lower Court. For the above mentioned reasons, the Civil Revision Petition is dismissed. ------------------------------------ C.V.NAGARJUNA REDDY,J Date:20-11-2009 MNR [1]) AIR 1971 SC 1070 [2]) (2001) 3 SCC 1