GOVINDASAMI NAICKER Vs. PERUMAL RAJA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petition to revise the order of the District Judge of West Tanjore in A. S. No. 184 of 1923. Petitioner purchased a house in Court-auction. The 1 counter-petitioner-claiming to be owner, made the deposit under Order 21 of Rule 89, Civil P. C., the cancellation of the sale has been ordered and hence this petition.

(2.) It is first contended that the 1 counter-petitioner is barred by res judicata because he withdrew a claim after the 2nd counter-petitioner took certain oaths. There is no absolute rule of res judicata applying to execution proceedings, and it cannot be held that a man is debarred from defending his action under Rule 89 because he desisted from his action under Rule 58 of Order 21. The petitioner's second point is that the words "owning such property by virtue of a title acquired before such sale," cannot apply to an owner whose title is longstanding and not recently derived from the judgmentdebtor. Of course, the language of the section conveys no such limitation but petitioner relies upon a ruling reported in a Calcutta journal, Dulhin Mathura Koer V/s. Bangsidhari Singh [1912] 15 C. L. J. 83.

(3.) There it is argued with considerable acumen that the Legislature intended to restrict ownership in Rule 89 to ownership recently acquired. This may be so but, with all respect, I consider the governing factor to be not what the Legislature intended, but what the Legislature has enacted. The whole object of embodying the law of a country in an elaborate system of Codes, is that every subject should have a ready means of knowing the law under which he is governed.