Soon, corporates will have to shell out more as court fee for filing lawsuits in high courts and Supreme Court as the Centre is about to amend the Court Fee Act to hike the court fees for corporates.

Besides hiking court fees, the government is also planning a Commercial Courts Bill, Law Minister M Verrappa Moily and Law Secretary T K Vishwanathan said Sunday.

“An amendment to the Court Fee Act will soon be tabled before the Cabinet,” Moily said. Moily’s remarks followed Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan’s suggestion that “taking harsh decisions like increasing court fees” could help the judiciary overcome paucity of funds. Speaking at a function on Sunday, Justice Balakrishnan said corporates engaged precious court time in India by paying a “pittance” while in several other countries “companies even pay fees for hearing the matter if it continues over a specified period of time, say three days”.

He cited the example of cheque-bouncing cases under the Negotiable Instruments Act, which make up a major chunk of pending cases in lower judiciary, that are filed with a fee of Rs 2. “Several states don’t even charge that,” he said and urged the Finance and Law Ministers — both of whom were present at the function — to bring in a suitable amendment to rectify this.

Echoing the CJI’s concern, Justice S H Kapadia, who will be the next Chief Justice, said the fee structure should be different for individual litigants as corportates. “Those who seek remedy in commercial disputes must pay adequate court fee,” Justice Kapadia said. “I personally come across patent cases or income tax cases where about Rs 5,000 crore is at stake. But court fees for these cases is merely Rs 10,000.” Justice Kapadia said that unless financial resources were increased, justice delivery could not be effective.

... contd.