The main legal point established is that a second suit for redemption is maintainable, and the rights of a mortgagor are not extinguished by procedural provisions.

1. The plaintiff appeals to this Court against the decree of the court below dated 5th March 1949 dismissing his suit (O.S. No. 877 of 1122) for redemption of a mortgage on the preliminary ground of its non-maintainability being a second suit for redemption after execution of the decree obtained by him in O.S. No. 212 of 1104 for redemption of the same mortgage was barred by limitation and the only question that arises is whether notwithstanding the institution of a suit and the passing of a decree for redemption the subsequent suit for redemption of the same mortgage is maintainable.

2. The Transfer of Property Act, IV of 1882 (Central) is law in this State, its operation having been extended thereto by Central Act No. III of 1951 as from 1.5.1952. Until then the law of the erstwhile State of Travancore and Cochin governed the respective areas. The Transfer of Property Act was not in the statute book of Travancore but most of its provisions were being followed as embodying general principles. The same was the case in Cochin till the law was codified by the Cochin Transfer of Property Act XVII of 1111 which came into force on 1.1.1112. This case comes from the Travancore area and arose when the rights of parties were not regulated by Statute. Those rights fall to be adjudged on general principles independently of any technical statutory provision. The inquiry has, therefore, to be pushed back and has to start from the pre-Transfer of Property Act, 1882, period to consider the law that then prevailed, follow its development and see whether the Transfer of Property Act made any difference. There was conflict of judicial opinion among the British Indian High Courts as they were called. We may start with two cases which arose before the Act taking divergent views. I.L.R. 6 Madras 119 Sami Achari v. Somasundaram Achari and 7 Bombay 467 Ganansavant Balswant v. Narayanan Dhoud Savant. The Madras case was in favour of the maintainability of a second suit for redemption while the Bombay case took the opposite view. The High Courts of Allahabad and Calcutta followed Bombay and held that a second suit was not maintainable. The ground of the Madras view was that in the absence of a provision in the decree set up as a bar to the second suit that the mortgagor would be foreclosed if he did not exercise his right of redemption his right to redeem is not lost because he omitted to make the payment as per the decree which was the condition of his recovering possession in the former proceedings and that so long as that right exists, a suit for redemption is competent. This was in general the view taken by the Madras High Court until the opposite was declared to be the right view by the Full Bench of that High Court in Vedapuratti v. Vallabha Viliya Raja I.L.R. 25 Madras 300. Ganansavant v. Narayanan, I.L.R. 7 Bombay 467 took the opposite view on the authority of Lockyer v. Ferryman, L.R. 2 A.C. 519 which held that a second suit for redemption was not maintainable on account of the rule of English Law that a decree for redemption on default of the decree-holder to pay money within the time fixed in the decree or if none be fixed within the time allowed by law for execution of the decree operates as a judgment for foreclosure. As a result of the conjoint operation of this rule and the rule of res judicata which debars the mortgagor from afterwards bringing a second suit for redeeming the same property the High Court of Bombay held that a second suit for redemption was not maintainable. The High Courts of Cochin and Travancore followed the Madras and the Bombay views in their earliest reported decisions in Krishnan v. Varunni (4 Select Decisions 684) and Raman v. Kadiru (5 T.L.R. 30) respectively and each court maintained the view first taken, in later cases (See 5 Cochin 269, 9 Cochin 118,13 T.L.R. 109, 18 T.L.R. 76, 5 T.L.J. 5) and thereafter applying the principle of stare decisis each court stuck to its view without discussion. The