BASAWA CHAMBASAWRAJ Vs. SOMASHEKHARARAJ SHIVRAJ

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a decree-holder's appeal against an order in execution dismissing his petition. There had been a previous execution of the decree and that execution came to an end rather more than three years before the decree-holder put in an application for amendment of the decree, so that at the time of the application for amendment execution of the decree was barred under the three years' rule. The amendment, however, was allowed and the present application for execution is the result. It has been dismissed in spite of the provisions of Article 182 (4) of the Indian Limitation Act, which dates the three years' period in the case of an amended decree from the date of the amendment. The executing' Court holds that the date of the amendment given in the third column of the schedule under Article 182 (4) applies only when the decree amended was still capable of execution at the time of the amendment, and there is judicial authority for that view. Nevertheless in this appeal we think that the executing Court was wrong and that the decree must be executed as it stands.

(2.) IF I had to decide this point in the absence of authority, I should take the words in the article at their face value and hold that the date of the amendment as the starting point for limitation means the date of the amendment and nothing else. It can be argued that an executing Court, though it is not entitled to go behind the decree and see whether the decree is a good decree or a bad decree, is nevertheless entitled to consider whether there has or has not been an amendment of the decree. It is difficult to controvert any such argument. But certain authorities have gone to the extent of holding that an amendment for the purposes of Article 182 (4) means something more than a formal amendment, so that if the amendment is only formal the three years' period dates not from the date of the amendment but from the date of the unamended decree. I may refer in that connection to Rameshwar Narain Misra v. Raghunandan Purbey (1937) I. L. R. 16 Pat. 453. There is something attractive in this contention, but nevertheless we do not think that it has any real substance. The article speaks of the date of the amendment without any sort of qualification, and we are not entitled to speculate upon the intentions of the Legislature, provided that effect can be given to the plain words of the statute without making nonsense of it. In this case we do not know the intentions of the Legislature, and for all we know that point may have been considered before the article was framed and the article deliberately left in its present condition for various reasons. There is also a decision of a single Judge of the High Court of Madras in Ahammad Kutty v. Kottekkat Kuttu (1932) I. L. R. 56 Mad. 458, which comes to the definite conclusion that a time-expired decree is dead and cannot be revived by an amendment, so that the amendment in spite of the plain words of the article will not give a fresh starting point to limitation. The learned Judge says (p. 467): IF the literal construction of Article 182 Clause 4, is to be accepted, then it would enable the decree-holder to execute a barred decree, but I cannot believe that this result was intended by the Legislature to follow from this provision. In support of this view a number of decisions from the unauthorised reports were cited, but nothing from the authorised reports. On behalf of the judgment-debtor reliance has been placed upon a decision of a full bench of the Madras High Court in Ramachandra Rao v. Parasuramayya [1940] Mad. 349, F. B. . That was a case where the Court had to consider the effect of an amendment upon the 12 years' rule provided by Section 48 of the Civil Procedure Code. The ground of the decision that a decree that was barred under the 12 years' rule could not be executed merely by reason of an amendment of the decree was that Article 182 of the Indian Limitation Act leaves the provisions of Section 48 of the Civil Procedure Code untouched. For the purposes of the three years' rule given in Article 182 there is a specific provision giving a fresh starting point of limitation from the date of an amendment, but there is no corresponding provision in s. 48 of the Civil Procedure Code to affect the 12 years' rule. That was the real ground of the decision. It is true that their Lordships said that an amendment of a decree to bring it in accordance with the judgment does not have the effect of starting a fresh period of limitation, implying thereby that a formal amendment is not the kind of amendment that is referred to in Article 182, but that remark was not necessary for the decision of the case, and with respect we are not prepared to hold that it is correct. They also said that a correction made in a time-barred decree leaves the decree still time-barred. For the purposes of Section 48 and the 12 years' rule that no doubt is true; but we cannot agree that it is true for the purposes of Article 182 and the three years' rule. On the other hand there are a number of decisions which insist upon following the plain language of the article itself for the purposes of the three years' rule, the general effect being that "amendment" means exactly what it says, and since it is not qualified by the article in any way, it includes an amendment of a decree which had become incapable under the three years' rule of being executed even before the amendment was made, and that it also includes an amendment which is formal as well as an amendment which is substantial. That a statute should be construed according to its plain meaning, if that can be done, without violence to commonsense or the obvious intention of the Legislature, is elementary, and the Privy Council insisted upon the need for following the plain words of the statute in Clause (2) of Article 182 in spite of certain equitable considerations which arose as to the desirability of applying it in that particular case: see Nagendranath De v. Sureschandra De (1932) I. L. R. 60 Cal. 1, s. c. 34 Bom. L. R. 1065, P. C. For this rigid meaning of Article 182 (4) see Lakshmikanta Rao v. Ramayya (1934) I. L. R. 58 Mad. 743 and Imam Din v. The Peoples Instalment and Saving Bank, Ltd. , Lahore (1940) I. L. R. 22 Lah. 659, where the various decisions are considered at length. We have no doubt that we ought to follow the plain unqualified words of the statute and hold that an amendment of a decree gives a fresh starting point for limitation, whether the amendment be formal or substantial and whether the decree amended was or was not time-barred at the date of the amendment.

(3.) IN any view Clause 4 of Article 182 should not be read subject to Clause 1, and as a matter of fact Clause 1 must be read subject to that clause as it must be read subject to Clauses (2) and (3 ). That means the starting point for limitation will be furnished by the date of the decree (confining ourselves to the question of amendment) only in cases where there has been no amendment. The question is sometimes raised as to whether it is necessary to read, e. g. Clauses 8 and 1 of Article 182 together. Now, in a sense that is correct, because one must necessarily, in order to gather the meaning of any portion of Article 182, read the article as a whole. But reading Clause 1 and Clause 4 together does not seem to me to give any other result except that where there has been an amendment the starting point of limitation will be the date of the amendment, otherwise the starting point of limitation will be the date of the decree.