RANI OF TUNI Vs. KORRA LATCHUNDHORA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Court delivered the following JUDGMENT:

(2.) This is a petition asking us to direct the Agent to the Governor, Vizagapatam, to review his proceedings dismissing, as inadmissible, an appeal from a decision of the Assistant Agent.

(3.) A preliminary objection has been taken to our hearing the petition, that it does not lie, because the Agent's disposal is not a decree, to which Rule 20, Vizagapatam Agency Rules, applies. The question whether the Agent's disposal is a decree is indistinguishable from the question, whether the decision under appeal before him was likewise a decree. The Assistant Agent was dealing with what undoubtedly was described before him as a petition and was headed as presented under Order XXI, Rule 58, Civil Procedure Code. The circumstances were that the present first respondent was claiming the property attached by the present petitioner in execution of her decree against the second and other respondents. The Assistant Agent in dealing with the case appears to have eventually declined to decide the two issues originally framed, which related to the claimant's title, and to have restricted his enquiry to possession with reference to the terms of Order XXI, Rule 59. That was all in accordance with the character of the proceedings as resembling what in. non-agency tracts are known as claim proceedings. In fact, however, the petitioner who was then in the position of first counter-petitioner, had expressly pleaded that the claim procedure under Order XXI, Rule 58, was not in force in the Agency tracts at all, and had relied on a plea of title. The petitioner, therefore, cannot be held in any degree responsible if the Assistant Agent erred in treating the proceedings before him as claim proceedings or in limiting the scope of the inquiry consistently with their being of that nature.