The main legal point established in the judgment is that for a debt to be scaled down under the explanation to Section 8 of Act IV of 1938, it must be a renewal of a previous debt due from an agriculturist, based on the debtor's qualifications at the relevant dates.

Wadsworth, J.

1. This civil revision petition is preferred by the plaintiff in a small cause suit and it raises a question as to the interpretation of the explanation to Section 8 of Act IV of 1938. The debt in question starts with a promissory note executed by defendants 1 and 2 and one Toongan. This was discharged by another note of 1932 executed by the same three persons. On the 29th July, 1935 the suit note was executed by defendants 1 and 2 alone discharging the earlier note of 1932. It is not a case of a joint family debt, the 1st and 2nd defendants being of different castes. We have no information whether Toongan was or was not an agriculturist. It was proved that in May, 1937 the 1st defendant purchased lands which qualify him as an agriculturist under the Act. The 2nd defendant appears to have been an agriculturist throughout. Three contentions have been placed before us on behalf of the petitioner to show that the lower Court was wrong in scaling down the debt as against both the defendants.

2. Firstly it is contended that it is not the same debt as that incurred in 1932, the debtors being different. It seems to us that this contention must be negatived on the authority of the decisions in Doraikannu Odayar v. Veerasami Padayachi AIR1941Mad59 , and Peria Karuppan Chettiar v. Appaji Naidu AIR1941Mad202 . The debt of 1932 was apparently due jointly and severally from the defendants and Toongan and it is discharged by another debt due from the defendants. This, according to our rulings is sufficient to make the latter debt an inclusion in a fresh document of the former debt.

3. A further contention is that even if the suit debt is deemed to be a renewal of the debt of 1932, it cannot be a renewal so far as Toongans share in the debt is concerned, he not being shown to be an agriculturist, and that at the most the debt is to be scaled down only as to two-thirds of this amount. This contention is apparently based on an assumption that the three debtors under the 1932 document were each liable only for one-third of the debt which does not appear to be the case. It seems to be an ordinary case of a joint and several promissory note, each of the debtors being liable for the whole debt. There is therefore no basis for assuming that as to one-third of the amount the new note is a renewal of Toongans debt and not a renewal of the liability binding the defendants by reason of the earlier note.

4. A more serious contention is based on the assumption that the 1st defendant was not an agriculturist before he purchased the property in May, 1937. There is no finding by the trial Court that he was not possessed of any interest in agricultural land before May, 1937; but assuming this to be the case, can it be said that the 1st defendant is not entitled to claim the benefit of the explanation to Section 8 by reason of the fact that at the time when his prior debt was discharged he had not got the qualifications laid down for an agriculturist ? We held in Krishnaswami Aiyar v. Nagalinga Mudaliar (1940)2MLJ174 , that the explanation to S.8 postulated that the earlier debt of which the suit debt was a renewal must itself have been a debt due from an agriculturist. In that case there was no question as to the point of time at which the debtor under the prior debt had to possess the qualifications of an agriculturist. It is, however, argued that in order that the antecedent debt should be due from an agriculturist, it must have been due from an agriculturist, at least at the time of its discharge and there is a certain prima facie plausibility about this argument. It might be contended that if the antecedent debtor only acquired the status of an agriculturist at some later point of time, the antecedent debt was not due from an agriculturist at all. There are, however, very serious difficulties in the way of adopting this view. In the case reported in Palani Goundan v. Peria Goundan AIR1941Mad158 , which was a case under Section 19 and ra