PALANI GOUNDAN Vs. PERIA GOUNDAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition to revise an order of the District Munsif of Namakkal dismissing the petitioner's application under Section 19 of the Madras Agriculturists Relief Act for scaling down the amount payable under the decree dated 14 August, 1932, in O.S. No. 678 of 1932 on the file of that Court.

(2.) The respondent obtained the decree on foot of a mortgage to which he claimed to be subrogated and was proceeding with its1 execution when the petitioner, having purchased the equity of redemption in the properties on 17th April, 1936, in execution of a money decree against the mortgagors, intervened with a claim to have the respondent's decree amended under Section 19 of the Act. There is no dispute that the petitioner is an agriculturist but the respondent objected that the petitioner was not a judgment-debtor within the meaning of that section. The Court below upheld the objection and dismissed the application. It appears to have been conceded in the Court below that the defendants in the mortgage suit against whom the decree was passed were not agriculturists at the commencement of the Act as, after the purchase by the petitioner as aforesaid, they had no agricultural lands left in their possession, and it was presumably a matter of indifference to them whether or not the amount of the decree was reduced.

(3.) Before dealing with the main question as to whether or not the petitioner can be regarded as a judgment-debtor within the meaning of Section 19 of the Act, we will mention, only to dismiss, the suggestion that, in view of the definition of debt in Section 3(iii), unless the debt for the repayment of which the decree was passed was a debt due by an agriculturist even at its inception, Section 19 could have no application. The object of the Act is clearly to provide relief for debtors who are agriculturists, at the commencement of the Act (See Section 17) while Section 19, read with the definition of agriculturist seems to require that the debtor seeking relief should be an agriculturist at the time of the application, and the first paragraph of Section 19 further requires, with a view to prevent abuse of the provisions of the Act, that the debtor should also have been an agriculturist on the 1 October, 1937, as the proposal of affording relief to indebted agriculturists was made known that date. Thus, it is clear that the agriculturist character of the debtor is not relevant for purpose of scaling down debts under the Act except with reference to these three dates, and it is immaterial whether or not the debtor had such character when the debt was originally incurred where it was incurred prior to the 1 October, 1937.