The court cannot extend the time for compliance with a condition in an order setting aside an ex parte decree, after the application has been dismissed for non-compliance.

( 1 ) HAS referred the above revisions to a Division Bench on the ground that it was necessary that the, Bench should consider how far the decision in Manley Estatates Ltd. v. Benedek . affected the reasoning in balakrishna Ayyar v. Parvathammal. The facts are simple and may be briefly stated. The respondent obtained a decree ex parts for possession against the petitioner. On an application filed by the petitioner to set aside the ex parte decree, the Court made the following Order:" By consent, the ex parte decree will be set aside on condition of the petitioner depositing into Court the costs awarded by the decree as condition precedent by 2 P. M. on 14-7-1951. In default the petition will stand dismissed. "the amount was not deposited before 2 P. M. on 14-7-1951. The result was that the application stood dismissed on that date. Therefore, the petitioner filed two applications for extending the time for depositing the amount and for reviewing the order. The learned. Subordinate Judge relying upon the decision of a Division Bench of the Madras High Court in Balakrishna Ayyar v. Parvathammal, dismissed the applications. When the Civil Revision Petitions came up before Umamaheswaram J. for disposal, the learned Judge, for the aforesaid reasons, referred the matter to a Bench. In Balakrishna Ayyar v. Parvathammal , the facts were: Pending an appeal to the High Court against the decree in a suit for the administration of the estate of a deceased person, the appellant applied for stay of proceedings and an order was passed in the following terms on 3rd September 1926: " Petitioners to give security for Rs. 44,000/- as found by the Commissioners to the satisfaction of the lower Court within three months. Otherwise, the petition to stand dismissed with costs. " on 3rd December 1926, the petitioners put in an application to extend the time for furnishing security but that was dismissed on 17th December 1926 on the ground that the order of 3rd September 1926 had becom effective and the proper remedy for the petitioners was to apply for review of that order. When reliance was placed upon the provisions of Section 148 C. P. C. , curgenven J. made the following observations:"accepting, then, that an order of this kind, which remains open for a fixed period, and then, upon non-compliance with the stipulation, closes by force of its own terms, is a permissible form of order, it must in my view, follow that as soon as the time allowed has expired and the dismissal of the application has taken place, no variation of the terms of the order can be made. The position is, in fact, precisely the same as though the order had never been passed ; and the power to extend time given by section 148 C. P. C. cannot be invoked because not only has the period originally fixed or granted expired, but there is no previous order still current upon which an order extending time could operate. " (i) 1941-I, All England Reports 248. (a) 53 M. L. J. 494. After considering the case law on the subject, the learned Judge proceeded to observe :" Accepting this view, I do not think that there is anything in the cases cited which would support the proposition that the Court could still have extended the time because it has nowhere been said that this can be done once an order is defunct. "this decision is a clear authority for the position that, when an application stands dismissed, the Court has no power to extend the time. This decision was delivered in 1927 and it has stood the test of time. All the High courts followed either the decision or the principle recognised therein. Set goya Din v. Lalita Prasad . Surajmal Marwari v. Bhuvaneswar Prasad and eakub Shaikh v. Samjan Bibi Wardsworth J. in Sreepathi Balaiah v. Darsa ramayya followed the aforesaid judgment without any comment. But it is contended that the reasoning of the aforesaid judgment was shaken by the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Manley Estates Ltd. v. Benedek : It is theref