KUNJAMMA KARTHIANI AMMA Vs. LORD KRISHNA BANK LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant in A. S.462 of 1960 is the second judgment debtor and the revision petitioner in C. R. P. 645 of 1964 is the debtor petitioner, in two separate proceedings under the Kerala Agriculturists Debt Relief Act, 1958, Act 31 of 1958, against their respective creditors, two banking companies, who are the respondents before us. The appeal and the civil revision petition concern chiefly the application of S.4(2) and (3) of the Act, to the debts due to the respondents. For the appellant and for the revision petitioner, it was contended, that the computation of these debts for payment under the Act must be in accordance with S.4(2) and (3), read in the light of the definition of the term 'principal' in S.2(h). For the respondents it was contended that each of the debts being in excess of Rs. 1,500 and having arisen out of a single transaction, is outside the purview of the Act, except to the extent indicated by the proviso to S.2(c)(xi), under which not only the provisions of S.5 but also of S.4(2) in which the term 'principal' occurs, are excluded, although the latter is referred to in S.4(3), and so the debts must be computed in terms of the provisions of the contract between the parties. The courts below having repelled the contentions of the appellant and the revision petitioner, they have come up before us.

(2.) In each case, the transaction was an overdraft accommodation with the respective respondent. Although the borrowings on certain occasions did not exceed Rs. 1,500, the total amount borrowed on the strength of the overdraft accommodation exceeded Rs. 1,500 in each case. That the borrowings were in each case not made all at once, but on different occasions is immaterial; it has been ruled in Oommen v. Kottayam Orient Bank Ltd. ( 1963 KLT 1150 ), which was followed in Chandy Cheriyan v. Travancore General Bank Ltd. ( 1965 KLT 737 ) that such borrowing on an overdraft agreement must be held to arise out of a single transaction. The above facts bring both cases squarely within the exclusion in S.2(c)(xi) from the definition of 'debt'

(3.) S.2(c)(xi) and the proviso to it are as follows:-