KUNHIRAMAN Vs. KUNHAMBU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Omitting clauses (a) to (n), S.2(3) of the Kerala Debt Relief Act, 1977 defines "debt" as follows:-

(2.) The petitioner is the judgment debtor. When execution was taken out, he contended that he was a debtor entitled to the benefit of S.3 of Act 17/77. The decree holder pointed out that the total indebtedness of the petitioner exceeded three thousand rupees. The petitioner's case is that the assessment of his total indebtedness takes in an amount due to the Syndicate Bank, that a liability of that kind is not a debt as defined in S.2(3) because of the exclusions in clauses (a) to (n) thereof, and that if that liability is excluded, the rest of his indebtedness is less than three thousand rupees. The court below held that the term "debt" in S.2(4) should be given its ordinary meaning and not the restricted meaning given in S.2(3). In this view, it found that the petitioner was not a debtor as his total indebtedness exceeded three thousand rupees. It is the correctness of this view that is now under challenge.

(3.) There is a direct decision against the petitioner on this point, by my learned brother Viswanatha Iyer J., in Baby v. Sidhardhan ( 1979 KLT 869 ). Counsel for the petitioner suggests that the view taken therein requires reconsideration.