The judgment-debtor has the burden of pleading and proving that the attached property is exempt from attachment and sale under Section 60 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

( 1 ) IN this appeal, the judgment-debtors have assailed the order passed by the learned single Judge during execution of the decree obtained by the respondents against them.

( 2 ) ON April 30, 1963 the respondents obtained a decree for Rs. 75,000. 00 and odd against the appellants from the civil court at Kanpur. On the basis of a transfer certificate, on August 18, 1964 the decree-holders filed an application for execution of this decree in the court of the Subordinate Judge First Class, Delhi. On May 5, 1965 the executing court attached houses of the judgment-debtors, bearing Nos. 4763 and 4764 situated at Deputy Ganj, Sadar Bazar, Delhi, in execution of the decree. On October 14, 1966 the appellant, Matu Ram, stated before the executing court that he had properties other than the attached houses which were specified in the statement filed in court and marked Exhibit J. I and the decreeholder may proceed against those properties first. The respondents agreed to this suggestion without prejudice to their right to proceed against the attached houses if the decretal amount for any reason was not realised from those other properties. It then transpired that in the other properties the appellants had only an insignificant share and the decretal amount could not be realised from them. The respondents, therefore, applied to the court for sale of the two attached houses. The appellants filed objections to this vide 1. A. Nos. 1580 of 1971 and 629 of 1972. They were however, dismissed by order of the executing court dated October 27. 1972, The respondents then applied again to the court to proceed with the sale of the two houses- Notice of this application was issued to the appellants. They again filed objections on January 29, 1973 and contended that the transfer certificate obtained by the respondents from Kanpur courts should be considered by the respondents to have exhausted itself due to passage of time and that the attachment of the two houses which was effected as far back as May 5, 1965 should be deemed to have been released as nothing had been done in respect of these properties over the past so many years. It was also contended that there was no subsisting attachment in respect of these houses and that they could not, therefore, be put to sale. The learned single Judge found that all these objections were without substance and dismissed them by the impugned order and directed the decree-holder to proceed further with the execution and to file the application under Order 21 rule 66 Civil Procedure Code.

( 3 ) SHRI R. M. Lal, appearing for the appellants, has not made any serious attempt to canvass the correctness of the findings in respect of the first two objections and very rightly because, as found by the learned single Judge, the execution application in pursuance of which the houses were attached was still pending and was at no time dismissed. This execution was started on the basis of a valid transfer certificate and it is not the case of the appellants that the houses in question were not attached during this execution. It was because of the statement of the appellant, Matu Ram, himself that the respondents agreed to proceed first against the other properties mentioned in Annexure J. 1 and the execution proceedings, therefore, took time but the attached houses were at no stage released. The objections, therefore, that the transfer certificate should be considered to have exhausted itself and the attached houses should be deemed to have been released were wholly without merit.

( 4 ) IN support of the third objection, Shri R. M. Lal urged that the attached houses could not be sold by reason of the Punjab Relief of Indebtedness Act and the proviso to Section 60 of the Code of Civil Procedure providing for exemption from attachment and sale of a residential house belonging to the judgment-debtor. Confronted with the position that no averment that the attached houses were the residential houses of the app