CHELLAPPAN PILLAI Vs. BHARGAVAN PANICKER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition to revise an order of the First Additional Munsiff, Neyyattinkara, rejecting an application under S.7 of the Agriculturists Debt Relief Act, 1958, to amend the decree in O. S. No. 330 of 1959 on his file. Objection was taken by the respondent that a decree cannot be amended except in conformity with the judgment in the case.

(2.) The prayers in the application are only to record in the decree that the applicant, who is the first defendant therein, is an agriculturist, and that the decree debt is one that comes within the purview of the Act, and to amend the decree in accordance with the provisions of the Act. Counsel pointed out that the application is exactly in the Form prescribed by the Rules for an application under S.7 of the Act. But, it is elementary that forms given merely as models cannot be taken as guides to the meaning of a statute. "Schedule forms are always dangerous guides to the meaning of a statute, and this particular form (the form of warrant of imprisonment under S.488 given in Schedule V of the Criminal Procedure Code) is really no guide at all" observed Blagdon, J. in AIR 1941 Rangoon 135 at 140. In Pandiri Sarveswara Rao v. Maturi Umamaheswara Rao ( AIR 1941 Mad. 152 ) their Lordships Wadsworth and Patanjali Sastri, JJ. observed: