KUNHI BEAKY Vs. KUNHAMBU NAIR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Second Appeal 869 of 1960 is by defendants 1 and 2, and Second Appeal 1045 of 1960 is by the plaintiff, in O. S. 358 of 1958, a suit on a simple mortgage, which was instituted on the 15th July, 1958. The relevant part of sub-s.(2) of S.3 of the Kerala Agriculturists Debt Relief Act, Act 31 of 1958, is that "where a creditor files a suit for recovery of a debt before the expiry of six months from the commencement of this Act ... the Court shall in decreeing the suit direct the plaintiffs to bear his own costs and to pay the costs of the defendant who is an agriculturist ...". Defendants 1 and 2 are agriculturists. The Act came into force on the 14th July, 1958. Applying the above, the court of first instance decreed the plaintiff to bear his own costs and to pay the costs of defendants 1 and 2, but in appeal the court decreed the parties to bear their costs in the two courts. Second Appeal 869 of 1960 is directed against the decree in appeal in so far as the costs of the defendants in the first court have been disallowed to them, and second appeal 1045 of 1960 is directed in so far as the costs in the two courts have not been allowed to the plaintiff.

(2.) The appellate court modified the decree of the first court on the ground that the plaintiff had no information about the passing of the Act before the suit was filed, and it relied on the decisions in The Dominion of India New Delhi v. Manindra Land and Building Corporation Ltd. AIR 1954 Calcutta 174 and C. Ganapathi Mudaliar v. N. Krishnamachari AIR 1922 Mad. 417 , both of which, in my opinion, are inapplicable. In the former, the question was whether the plaintiff, a bank, was bound to follow the procedure prescribed by the High Denomination Bank Notes (Denomination) Ordinance 3 of 1946, read with Rules framed thereunder, for exchanging certain high denomination notes it possessed, at the Reserve Bank. While holding inter alia, that the bank had substantially complied with the provisions of the Ordinance and the Rules, the court observed:

(3.) In this case, there is no question of the retrospective operation of S.3 at all, because by S.1(3), the Act had come "into force at once". Under S.3 of the Travancore Cochin Interpretation and General Clauses Act, 1125, Act 7 of 1125, amended by Act 3 of 1957, as held by the bench in Iype Varkey v. Catholic Union Bank Ltd., 1960 KLT 1070 , Act 31 of 1958 came into force on the termination of the previous day by midnight on the 13th July, 1958; the suit was instituted "a day later. The real question to consider if, whether the plaintiff's ignorance of the new law exonerates him. When the legislature has enacted a law and it has come into force, I do not see how the application of that law can be prevented or postponed on the ground of sheer ignorance of the law. The rule has been stated thus in Craies on Statute Law, 5th edition, at page 356: