B.N.AGRAWAL, J.

1. Defendant No. 6 has moved this Court by filing the present revision application against the impugned order by which the objections filed on behalf of defendants Nos. 1, 5 and 6 to the recording of compromise have been rejected, compromise has been found to be lawful and the suit was adjourned to another date for checking up the compromise petition and submission of report by the office.

2. The facts of the case in short are that the plaintiffs-opposite parties filed a suit for partition claiming half share in the suit property in which two sets of written statements were filed by the defendants. During the pendency of the suit, on 7/04/1982, a compromise petition purported to bear the signatures and left thumb impression of the parties was filed. Two objection petitions were filed to the recording of the compromise, one by defendant No. 1 and the other by defendants 5 and 6. According to defendant No. 1, his signature on the compromise petition was obtained by practising fraud upon him. According to defendants Nos. 5 and 6, they neither entered into the compromise nor put their left thumb impressions on the compromise petition. Since the genuineness of the compromise was disputed, the trial Court held enquiry on this question during the course of which the parties examined witnesses in support of their respective cases and the trial Court after considering the same came to the conclusion that the compromise was genuine, rejected the objections filed to the recording of the compromise, held that the compromise was lawful and adjourned the case to another date for checking up the compromise petition by the office. Hence this revision application. Since the question raised would affect large number of cases, for an authoritative pronouncement, the learned single Judge before whom the case was placed for hearing referred the same to a Division Bench and hence the matter has been placed before us.

3. Learned counsel appearing on behalf of the plaintiffs-opposite parties took a preliminary objection to the maintainability of this revision application on the ground that the remedy of the petitioner was to prefer an appeal against the decree which may be passed in terms of the compromise. On the other hand, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner contended that no appeal is maintainable under S. 96(1) of Civil P. C. (hereinafter referred to as the Code) as, according to S. 96(3) of the Code, an appeal against a consent decree is not maintainable and the only remedy of the petitioner was to assail the impugned order by filing the present revision application. Seeing the important and ticklish question involved in the case, we requested Mr. Sukumar Sinha to assist the Court who assisted us with his usual vehemence and very ably and fairly placed both the view points clearly pointing out the distinctions therein.

4. In my view, for proper appreciation of the question referred to, it would be necessary to go into the legislative changes made in the relevant provisions. The relevant provisions for deciding the question referred to are S. 96, Order XXIII, Rules 3 and 3A, and Order XLIII of the Code. In the year 1976, by Code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Act, 1976 (Act No. 104 1976) (hereinafter referred to as the "Amending Act") various amendments have been made in different provisions of the Code including the aforesaid provisions with effect from 1-2-1977. According to the unamended provisions, O. XXIII, R. 3 provided that the where it was proved to the satisfaction of the Court that the suit has been adjusted either wholly or in part by any lawful agreement, compromise or satisfaction, the Court is required to pass a decree in accordance therewith so far as the same related to the subject-matter of the suit. Before amendment, if the Court would have passed an order recording or refusing to record an agreement or compromise or satisfaction, the remedy available to the aggrieved party was to prefe