VALAYUDHAN Vs. GOKULAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) C. R. P. Nos. 190 and 382 are by the judgment debtors, and C. R. P. No. 415 by the decree holder, in three Small Cause Suits. They have been referred to a Division Bench for decision of the question, which is common to them, namely: where the debt involved in a decree passed before the commencement of the Kerala Agriculturists Debt Belief Act, XXXI of 1958, comes within the purview of S.4 thereof allowing discharge by instalments, an application for execution of the decree filed long after three years of the commencement of the Act, would be beyond time.

(2.) S.4 of the Kerala Agriculturists Debt Relief Act, 1958, allows, subject to specified exceptions, discharge of decree debts by instalments. The first instalment is payable within six months of the commencement of the Act, during which period execution is totally prohibited by S.3 of the Act. S.10 of the Act provides that if any of the instalments is defaulted the decree holder shall be entitled to execute the decree in respect of such defaulted instalment. It only allows him to execute the decree in regard to the defaulted instalments; but nothing in the Act compels him to execute his decree in driblets. A proviso to sub-s.(5) of S.4 of the Act enacts that, if and when default has been made in payment of six consecutive instalments, the entire sum remaining due under the decree shall be payable forthwith. It appears clear from the above provisions that in the case of a debt within the purview of the Act, execution of the decree thereon is prohibited, except in regard to defaulted instalments, till the last date for payment of the sixth instalment in default, which happens to be July 14, 1961, in the present three cases. "If an enactment renders a payment irrecoverable for a certain period, there may be a consequence, in default of express statutory provision, that the running of time under the appropriate limitation enactment is suspended while the payment is irrecoverable." (Halsbury's Laws of England, 3rd Edn., Vol. 24, page 198.) Such a suspension of limitation in the present cases has been for three years, from July 14, 1958, when the Act came into force, to July 14, 1961, when the debtor fell in default of six consecutive instalments payable under the Act.

(3.) The decree as such, except in regard to a small part thereof, having been non executable for three years as mentioned above, in the calculation of the period of limitation for execution that three years have to be excluded under S.15 of the Limitation Act. If that be so, it is not disputed that executions taken in all these cases are within time.