Suits by Indigent Persons

In one line

A person too poor to pay the court fee may sue without paying it, if the court is satisfied he is indigent and that his case is not one of the seven kinds the Code shuts out.

Why the Code provides for this

Court fees are charged as a proportion of the claim, so the bigger the wrong done to you the more it costs to complain about it. For a person with nothing, that turns the court into a place he cannot enter, and a right that cannot be enforced is not much of a right.

Order XXXIII is the Code's answer. It does not give the indigent person a better case; it removes the fee as a barrier to bringing the case he has. Notice how carefully it is fenced: an inquiry into means, a list of grounds for rejection, notice to the Government and to the opposite party, and provisions for recovering the fee at the end. The Code is generous about access and careful about abuse.

Who is an indigent person

The Explanation to Rule 1 defines it. A person is an indigent person if:

(a) he is not possessed of sufficient means, other than property exempt from attachment in execution of a decree and the subject matter of the suit, to enable him to pay the fee prescribed by law for the plaint in that suit; or

(b) where no such fee is prescribed, if he is not entitled to property worth one thousand rupees, again excluding property exempt from attachment and the subject matter of the suit.

Two exclusions run through both limbs and they are worth stating in any answer: property exempt from attachment is not counted, and the subject matter of the suit is not counted. It would be absurd to tell a man he can afford the fee because of the very property he is suing to recover.

Any property acquired after the presentation of the application and before its decision is taken into account in deciding the question.

The procedure

Rule 2: the application must contain the particulars required in a plaint, together with a schedule of any movable or immovable property belonging to the applicant with its estimated value, and it must be signed and verified as a pleading.

Rule 3: the application shall ordinarily be presented by the applicant in person, unless he is exempt from appearing in court, in which case it may be presented by an authorised agent.

Rule 1A: the inquiry into the means of an indigent person shall, in the first instance, be made by the chief ministerial officer of the Court, unless the Court otherwise directs, and the Court may adopt his report or make its own inquiry.