An order passed by a Court, on a reference made to it under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, finally disposing of it, is appealable.

RAMACHANDRA IYER, C. J. :- The substantial question that arises for consideration in this civil revision petition relates to its maintainability. The order sought to be revised is one that rejected a reference made to the court under S. 18 and S. 31 of the Land Acquisition Act, on the ground that the amount of compensation had already been paid out to one of the claimants. If an appeal were to be against such an order, the present civil revision petition, which is filed under S. 115 C.P.C. will be incompetent

2. Before proceeding further with the consideration of the question, we shall set out briefly the facts that have given rise to it.

3. Two items of land, R. S. Nos. 1403 and 1404/2, lying in Vanniya Teynampet in Malapore area, were acquired by the Government for providing quarters for the staff of the Posts and Telegraphs Department. The notification under S. 4(1) of the Land Acquisition Act is dated 18-04-1956. The owner of the properly was one Doraiswami Mudaliar, who is the second respondent to this petition. He applied for payment out of the entire compensation for the two survey numbers. It appears however that even earlier, in execution of a mortgage decree obtained against him, the petitioner, Chengalavaraya Chetti, had purchased one of the two abovementioned items, namely, R. S. No. 1403. This fact was not known to the Land Acquisition Officer. The compensation for both the items of land - we are concerned in this case only with one of them, namely, R. S. 1403 - was fixed at Rs. 1,71,879-48. The amount was directed to be distributed between the second respondent and certain persons who had mortgage claims over the property. Doraiswami Mudaliar contested the adequacy of the compensation, and at his instance a reference under S. 18 was made to the City Civil Court, Madras which duly registered the case as L.A.C. 60 of 1958. Shortly thereafter, Chengalvaraya Chetti, the petitioner, obtained information about the land acquisition proceedings and he applied to the Collector to adjudicate his right to the compensation amount, relative to R. S. 1403. In due course, the Collector made a reference to the City Civil Court in L.A.C. No. 153 of 1958 concerning the title of the petitioner to obtain the compensation in preference to Doraiswami Mudaliar. While making the reference, the Collector invited the attention of the City Civil Court to the earlier reference made by him - L. A. C. No. 60 of 1958 - and suggested to the court to dispose of both of them together. It is a matter for regret that the court ignored this advice. Each one of the references was dealt with separately; Doraiswami Mudaliar, who alone could have known the connection between the two, did not appear to have informed the court about the desirability of both the cases being disposed of together. The result was that L. A. C. 60 of 1958 was disposed of first. This enabled Doraiswami Mudaliar to obtain payment of the entire compensation amount.

4. When L. A. C. 153 of 1958 came up for hearing subsequently, the learned Principal City Civil Judge look the view that inasmuch as the compensation moneys had already been paid out to the second respondent, the court could not consider the question of title as between the rival claimants; he directed Chengalvaraya Chetti to file a suit to establish his claim and obtain payment of the compensation amount in respect of the property purchased by him in court auction. Chengalvaraya Chetti has now filed this civil revision petition challenging the correctness of that order.

5. A preliminary objection has been taken oil behalf of the second respondent that as an appeal would be against the decision of the City Civil Court in the instant case, this court would not1 be competent to entertain u revision petition under S. 115 C.P.C. In other words, the argument pressed on us against the maintainability of this petition is that, as the effect of the order of the lower court in the instant case is to affirm the award of the