The suit for recovery of a debt due under a pronote must be instituted by all the legal representatives of the deceased creditor. Each heir cannot maintain a separate suit for recovery of their share of the debt.

1. This is an appeal by the defendant from a decree in a suit for recovery of the amount due under a pronote executed by the defendant to deceased Vydianatha Iyer the father of the plaintiff on 3-4-1952 in renewal of a pronote executed by him on 26-8-1124. The plaintiff's father died. The plaintiff, as manager of the joint family has filed this suit for recovery of the amount alleging that the defendant had not paid the amount in spite of demand. The defendant contended that Vydianatha Iyer had another son, P.W. 2, that there was a partition between the plaintiff, his brother P.W. 2 and their father in 1120 by which they divided the properties of the joint family, that the note was taken by the father after the partition, that the assets of Vydianatha Iyer devolved on the plaintiff and his brother by succession as tenants-in-common, that the plaintiff alone was not entitled to recover the amount, that P.W. 2 was a necessary party to the suit and that the suit was not maintainable.

2. The trial court dismissed the suit on the ground that the plaintiff alone was not entitled to maintain the suit. On appeal by the plaintiff the lower appellate court gave a decree to the plaintiff in respect of one-half of the amount due under the promissory note. It is against this decree that the defendant has filed the appeal.

3. Therefore the question for consideration is whether the suit was maintainable. It is well-settled by authorities that though the right of a deceased person vests in his legal representatives in several shares, so far as the ancestor's debtor is concerned, they take as one unit, and a suit to enforce the right must be instituted by all of him. The plaintiff, his brother P.W. 2 and their father were divided under Ext. P5 partition and were no longer members of a joint Hindu family. Ext. P1 was executed in favour of the plaintiff's father long after the partition, and therefore the property therein cannot be considered as co¬parcenary property in the hands of the plaintiff and P.W. 2.

4. In Abinsa Bibi v. Abdulkhader Saheb (ILR. 25 Madras 26) Bhashyam Ayyangar, J., has considered the question of the maintainability of the suit by one of the heirs and this is what the learned judge says:

"On his death his right devolved upon all his heirs in several shares which are regulated by the Muhammadan law of inheritance. Though as between themselves their rights are several, yet so far as the ancestor's debtor is concerned his obligation is single and cannot be split up without his consent. The numerous heirs of the deceased creditor are only jointly entitled to enforce the right which the deceased creditor, if alive, could singly enforce. If by the death of the creditor the right and the correlative obligation are, as under the civil law, split into several, so that each one of the heirs of the creditor can enforce the payment to him of his share of the debt, and the debtor is under a distinct obligation to each of the heirs of the creditor to discharge his several shares in the debt When a right accruing to a single person from a covenant in his favour devolves, on his death on two or more of his heirs in several shares, no question can possibly arise as to whether the covenant was joint or several, and the only difference caused by the death of the covenantee is that the cause of action which resided in one person, is, by operation of law transferred to a number of parceners, who, as observed by Tindal C.J., in Decharms v. Horiwood (10 Bing. 526 at p. 529), constitute one heir. In other words, the claim which was possessed by one individual is now possessed jointly by a number of individuals, who are his legal representatives and all must therefore join in a suit to enforce that claim. If one or more of such joint claimants do not join as plaintiffs, the course to be pursued in India, according to long established course of decisions is for the claimants bringing the suit to join, as party defendants, those who do not j