BHARGAVA, J.—This is a defendants revision application against an order of the Additional Civil Judge, Jaipur City whereby he decided to dispose of issues Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 10 along with other issues framed in the case after the evidence had been recorded.

2. It appears that plaintiff Girdharisingh instituted the present suit on 29th August, 1967, for specific performance of contract of sale of a house, in the alternative damages to the extent of Rs. 2500/- and for cancellation of the sale deed executed in favour of non-petitioner No. 2 on the basis of an agreement of sale entered into between him and the petitioner on 5-10-1963. The petitioner denied the plaint allegations as also the agreement set up by the plaintiff. The learned Additional Civil Judge framed eleven issues in the suit, ordered that arguments will be heard on issues Nos. 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10 which in his opinion were preliminary issues. However, on the date on which arguments were to be heard the learned Judge changed his opinion because the decision of this Court in Chhingaram vs. Nihal Singh(l) was brought to his notice. On behalf of the petitioner another decision of this Court in Prithviraj vs. Munnalal(2), was shown to the learned Judge, but he preferred to follow the decision relied upon by the plaintiff for the reason that it was a later decision. Accordingly, he passed the order against which the present revision application has been preferred.

3. It is contended on behalf of the petitioner that once the learned Additional Civil Judge had decided to determine the aforesaid issues as preliminary issues, he ought not to have reconsidered his previous order. It is also contended that the learned Addl. Civil Judge ought to have followed the Division Bench decision in preference to the decision of a Single Judge even though it happened to be later in time. Learned counsel has invited my attention to O. 14, r. 2 of the Code of C.P. which according to the learned counsel is of mandatory nature and lays down that in a case where the court is of opinion that the case or any part thereof may be disposed of on the issues of law only, it will postpone the settlement of issues of fact until after the issues of law have been determined. Reliance is placed on Prithviraj vs. Munnalal (2), Gulabchand vs. Kishanlal (3) and Premier Automobiles Ltd. Bombay vs. Laxmi Motors. Co., Jodhpur(4). The learned Additional Civil Judge has relied upon Chhinga Rams case (1) in which following observations were made by the learned Judge :

"This court has pointed out on numerous occasions that, in appealable cases, the trial court and the court of first appeal must decide the case on all the issues, and that principle must, as a rule, be followed even though some of the issues arising in the case may be of law and may go to the very root of it, the reason being that there is always a possibility of the decision of the courts below on the preliminary issues being reversed when the matter comes up to this Court, and then the appeal before it cannot be finally disposed of and the case has to be remanded because some issue or issues relating to fact have not been tried and decided by the courts below. This short circuiting of procedure, more often than not, leads to considerable delay which is entirely avoidable and subjects the parties to unnecessary expense and harassment and is strongly to be deprecated ".

These observations were made in a case which was instituted by the plaintiff for recovery of money on the basis of an agreement which according to the defendant was a mortgage deed and being unregistered was inadmissible in evidence. The trial court amongst others framed the following two issues :

1. Whether Ex. 1 was admissible in evidence.

2. Was the plaintiffs suit not maintainable on the footing of Ex. 1 and not by consideration, and determined these issues as preliminary issues. The trial court as well as the first appellate court came to the conclusion that Ex. 1 was inadmissible in evid

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