Devinder Gupta, C.J.

1. A Division Bench of this Court by its order dated 26.4.2002 passed in CMP.No.7201 of 2002 in CCCA (SR) No.27145 of 2002 did not agree with the view expressed and the law laid down by a Division Bench of this Court in Chandrapalaka Prabhakar v. Chandrapalaka Sadanandam (1997 (4) ALT 689), which in its turn had followed the decision of another Division Bench of this Court in Jokam Reddy & Others v. Gokar Mallaiah (AIR 1997 A.P. 367) and thus referred the matter to a Larger Bench for an authoritative pronouncement.

2. When this Bench was constituted, we noticed in our order dated 27.8.2004 that though no question had been formulated by the Division Bench, reference by the Division Bench was on two counts, namely, (1) as to the applicability of Section 14 of the Limitation Act, 1963 to an application filed seeking condonation of delay in filing appeal against ex parte decree, when such an appeal is filed after dismissal of an application filed under Order IX Rule 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure and, (2) as regards the maintainability of appeal filed against the ex parte decree under Section 96 of the Code of Civil Procedure after dismissal of applic