Schedule II — Fixed Court Fees on Other Documents

Schedule II is the fixed-fee half of the Kerala Court Fees and Suits Valuation Act, 1959. Where Schedule I charges an ad valorem slice geared to the money at stake, Schedule II prescribes a flat figure for documents whose worth cannot, or need not, be measured in rupees — a memorandum of appeal against an interlocutory order, an application to a public office, a copy of a judgment, a vakalatnama, a caveat. The Schedule runs from Article 3 to Article 19 (Articles 1, 2, 12 and 13 stand omitted), and every entry has been recast by the wholesale fee revision of Act 2 of 2003. This note maps each head, the fee it carries, and the case law that decides when a court drops out of Schedule I and into Schedule II.

The scheme: fixed fee as the residual category

The fee payable under the Act is computed under Chapters IV and VI and Schedules I and II read together. The dividing line is simple: a proceeding whose subject-matter has a calculable money value attracts ad valorem fee under Schedule I; a proceeding that is incapable of monetary valuation, or that the legislature has chosen to tax at a token rate, attracts a fixed fee under Schedule II. Schedule II is therefore the residual home for procedural documents and miscellaneous applications. The recurring statutory phrase — “not otherwise provided for” — appears in Articles 3, 9, 10(k), 11(g), 11(l), 11(t) and 14, signalling that a fixed fee bites only when no specific ad valorem head captures the document. For the structure of the ad valorem side, see Schedule I, and for the upstream computation machinery, see Computation of Court Fees.

The classification is not a matter of the litigant’s label. In Suhrid Singh @ Sardool Singh v. Randhir Singh (2010) 12 SCC 112 the Supreme Court held that court fee follows the substance of the relief, not its nomenclature in the plaint — a principle that decides whether a document falls into Schedule I or Schedule II in the first place. A pleader cannot dress an ad valorem claim as a fixed-fee “application” to escape the higher charge.

Article 3 — memoranda of appeal from orders

Article 3 is the busiest entry. It taxes a memorandum of appeal from an order — including an order determining a question under section 47 or section 144 CPC — that is “not otherwise provided for”. The fee is graded not by the value of the dispute but by the forum and the source of appellate power. An appeal to any court other than the High Court carries ten rupees. Appeals to the High Court are sub-classified: from an order of a subordinate court the fee is twenty-five rupees where the suit value exceeds one thousand rupees and ten rupees otherwise; an intra-court appeal under section 5 of the Kerala High Court Act, 1958 is twenty-five rupees from an appellate or original-jurisdiction order and two hundred rupees per appellant in any other case.

Article 3 also carries specialised heads inserted later: appeals under section 45-B of the Banking Companies Act, 1949 (two hundred and fifty rupees), appeals from the Income Tax and Wealth Tax Appellate Tribunals graded by the assessee’s income or net wealth, and an order under the Kerala Agriculturists’ Debt Relief Act, 1958 (five rupees). The unifying logic is that an appeal against a mere order — as opposed to a decree, which is taxed ad valorem under Schedule I — is treated as procedurally incidental and so attracts a fixed fee.

Article 4 — arbitration appeals

Article 4 governs a memorandum of appeal under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (the entry having been substituted by Act 29 of 2013 to replace the repealed Arbitration Act, 1940). Where the appeal is from an order of a Munsiff’s Court, or of a superior court in a case whose jurisdictional value does not exceed fifteen thousand rupees, the fee is a flat fifty rupees. In other cases the charge becomes quasi-ad valorem: two rupees for every hundred rupees up to one lakh, four rupees per hundred between one and five lakhs, and one rupee per hundred above five lakhs. Article 4 is a useful caution that “Schedule II” is not a synonym for “trivial flat fee” — some of its heads scale with value, blurring the textbook line between the two Schedules. The companion ad valorem treatment of money claims is taken up in Court Fees on Money Suits.

Articles 5 to 9 — copies and translations

Articles 5 to 9 tax copies and translations, the everyday paperwork of litigation. Article 5 charges five rupees for a copy or translation of a judgment or order that is not, and does not have the force of, a decree, whether of the High Court, a civil court, a Revenue Court or any other judicial or executive authority. Article 6 charges five rupees for a copy or translation of a judgment or order of a Criminal Court, and Article 7 the same for a copy of a decree, or an order having the force of a decree, of the High Court or any other court.

Article 8 is narrower: it taxes a copy of a document liable to stamp duty that a party leaves in place of the original it withdraws — the fee equals the stamp duty where that does not exceed fifty paise, and two rupees in any other case. Article 9 is the residual copy head: every copy of a revenue or judicial proceeding, account, statement or report not otherwise provided for carries two rupees per document. These heads matter in practice because a litigant who applies to the court for a copy is routed instead through Article 11(a), illustrating how Schedule II distributes the same activity across different articles depending on the addressee of the application.

Article 10 — applications to revenue and executive officers

Article 10 collects applications and petitions presented to officers of land revenue and other executive authorities. It covers applications by holders of temporarily settled land (10(a)), darkhast or assignment of land (10(b)), a lease of land from a Collector (10(c)), conservancy or improvement petitions (10(d)), copies from a board or executive officer (10(e)), and a forest contractor’s application to extend a lease, graded by lease value (10(f)). A modern insertion, clause 10(g), taxes an application for attestation of private documents intended to be used outside India — one hundred rupees where genuineness must be verified, fifty rupees where counter-signature after notarial attestation is required.

The catch-all is Article 10(k): an application or petition presented to a public officer or in a public office, not falling under any other clause and not otherwise provided for, carries a flat five rupees. Article 10 is the executive-side mirror of Article 11; the former addresses the administration, the latter the courts.

Article 11 — applications and petitions to courts

Article 11 is the longest entry and the one most often litigated. It taxes applications and petitions presented to courts, lettered (a) to (v). Routine heads include a court-copy application (11(a), five rupees), a written complaint of a non-cognizable offence (11(f), ten rupees), and a residual application to any court or magistrate in executive capacity not otherwise provided for (11(g), two rupees). Interlocutory relief is separately taxed: an application for arrest or attachment before judgment, or for a temporary injunction (11(h)), is ten or twenty-five rupees before a subordinate court depending on the value of the subject-matter, and fifty rupees in the High Court. An application under section 47 and Order XXI Rules 58 and 90 CPC (11(i)) is graded ten, twenty-five or fifty rupees by forum, and an application under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 (11(j)) is fifty rupees.

Article 11 also captures special petitions: setting aside an arbitral award (11(m)) and enforcing a foreign award (11(n)), both graded by award value; a revision petition to the High Court under section 115 CPC or section 22 of the Kerala Small Cause Courts Act, 1957 (11(p), twenty-five or fifty rupees); a company winding-up petition under sections 391, 439 and 440 of the Companies Act, 1956 (11(q), two hundred and fifty rupees); an application under section 45 of the Specific Relief Act, 1877 (11(s), two hundred rupees); a residual High Court application not otherwise provided for (11(t), ten rupees); and election petitions concerning local-body and Representation of the People Act offices (11(u) and 11(v)). The interplay of fixed and ad valorem fees on substantive reliefs is developed further in Court Fees on Suits for Specific Performance.

Article 11(k) — probate and letters of administration

Article 11(k) deserves separate treatment because it sits at the seam between Schedule II and Schedule I. An application for probate or letters of administration is taxed at a fixed fee — fifty rupees where the grant is to have effect throughout India (11(k)(i)), and a graded fee otherwise (11(k)(ii)) of one rupee where the estate does not exceed one thousand rupees and five rupees where it does. But the proviso to 11(k)(ii) is the hinge: if a caveat is entered and the application is registered as a suit, the fee shifts to one-half the Schedule I, Article 1 scale on the market value of the estate, less the fee already paid on the application. The fixed fee, in other words, is the price of an uncontested grant; contest converts it into an ad valorem charge.

The Kerala High Court applied exactly this logic in K.G. Sunilkrishnan v. K.G. Premsankar 2022 LiveLaw (Ker) 655 (C.S. Dias J.). When an original petition for probate or letters of administration is converted to a suit under Rule 26 of the Indian Succession Rules (Kerala), 1968, the court fee is payable under Article 11(k) of Schedule II, and the trial court had erred in demanding fee under section 25(a) read with Article 1 of Schedule I instead. The case is a clean illustration of how a single application can travel between the two Schedules according to whether it is contested — and of why the practitioner must read Article 11(k) together with its proviso, not in isolation.

Articles 14 to 17 — bonds, powers, vakalatnamas, agreements

Articles 14 to 17 tax the instruments that accompany litigation. Article 14 charges a bail bond or other instrument of obligation — two rupees when filed in a village court, five rupees when given under the Criminal or Civil Procedure Codes and not otherwise provided for. Article 15 taxes every copy of a power of attorney filed in a suit or proceeding at ten rupees.

Article 16 is the vakalatnama head and is forum-graded: a mukhtarnama, vakalatnama or any paper signed by an advocate signifying that he is retained carries five rupees before any court other than the High Court, a Collector, Magistrate or executive officer; five rupees before the Board of Revenue or a Chief Executive Authority; and ten rupees before the High Court or the Government. Because a vakalatnama is filed in virtually every case, Article 16 is the most frequently encountered Schedule II charge in daily practice. Article 17 taxes an agreement in writing stating a question for the opinion of the court under the CPC — one hundred rupees where the subject-matter does not exceed five thousand rupees, two hundred rupees otherwise.

Articles 18 and 19 — caveat and chit-fund arbitration

Article 18 fixes the fee on a caveat at fifty rupees (substituted by Act 2 of 2003). The figure is modest, but the caveat itself is significant: under the proviso to Article 11(k), the entry of a caveat in a probate matter is the event that converts a fixed-fee application into an ad valorem suit. Article 18 therefore charges the procedural act, while Schedule I charges the contest it triggers. Article 19, the last surviving entry, taxes an application to an arbitrator for adjudication of a dispute under the Chit Funds Act, 1982 at two per cent of the arbitration amount — another value-linked figure inside the “fixed fees” Schedule. Articles 1, 2, 12 and 13 stand omitted (Acts 6 of 1991 and 2 of 2003), so the working Schedule is 3 to 11 and 14 to 19.

Interpretive principles: substance, valuation and Section 149

Three principles govern Schedule II in litigation. First, substance over form: as Suhrid Singh (2010) 12 SCC 112 holds, the court reads the real relief, not the drafting label, so a substantive ad valorem claim cannot be smuggled into a fixed-fee article. Second, the plaintiff is master of valuation, within limits: in S. Rm. Ar. S. Sp. Sathappa Chettiar v. S. Rm. Ar. Rm. Ramanathan Chettiar AIR 1958 SC 245, 1958 SCR 1024 — a case that itself turned on a fixed partition fee under Article 17-B of the Madras Schedule II — the Supreme Court held that where the legislature prescribes a fixed fee, the litigant’s own jurisdictional valuation cannot be imported to convert that fixed fee into an ad valorem one. Section 53 of the Kerala Act codifies the same idea: where fee is payable at a fixed rate, the jurisdictional value is the market value, or such amount as the plaintiff states.

Third, deficit is curable, not fatal: court fee is a fiscal levy, not a penalty, so a litigant who undervalues by treating a matter as Schedule II when it is in truth Schedule I may make good the deficiency under section 149 CPC, which relates back to the date of presentation. The classification dispute, when it surfaces, is usually resolved on these three axes rather than by the bare wording of the article. For the foundational concepts of valuation and the authorities who fix and refund fees, see Definitions and Authorities and the overview at the Kerala Court Fees Act hub.