The main legal point established in the judgment is that the petitioner, as the purchaser of the properties subject to the mortgage decree, is entitled to apply for scaling down the amount payable under the decree in accordance with the provisions of the Madras Agriculturists Relief Act.

Patanjali Sastri, J.

1. This is a petition to revise an order of the District Munsif of Namakkal dismissing the petitioners application under Section 19 of the Madras Agriculturists Relief Act for scaling down the amount payable under the decree dated 14th August, 1932, in O.S. No. 678 of 1932 on the file of that Court.

2. The respondent obtained the decree on foot of a mortgage to which he claimed to be subrogated and was proceeding with its1 execution when the petitioner, having purchased the equity of redemption in the properties on 17th April, 1936, in execution of a money decree against the mortgagors, intervened with a claim to have the respondents decree amended under Section 19 of the Act. There is no dispute that the petitioner is an agriculturist but the respondent objected that the petitioner was not a judgment-debtor within the meaning of that section. The Court below upheld the objection and dismissed the application. It appears to have been conceded in the Court below that the defendants in the mortgage suit against whom the decree was passed were not agriculturists at the commencement of the Act as, after the purchase by the petitioner as aforesaid, they had no agricultural lands left in their possession, and it was presumably a matter of indifference to them whether or not the amount of the decree was reduced.

3. Before dealing with the main question as to whether or not the petitioner can be regarded as a judgment-debtor within the meaning of Section 19 of the Act, we will mention, only to dismiss, the suggestion that, in view of the definition of debt in Section 3(iii), unless the debt for the repayment of which the decree was passed was a debt due by an agriculturist even at its inception, Section 19 could have no application. The object of the Act is clearly to provide relief for debtors who are agriculturists, at the commencement of the Act (See Section 17) while Section 19, read with the definition of agriculturist seems to require that the debtor seeking relief should be an agriculturist at the time of the application, and the first paragraph of Section 19 further requires, with a view to prevent abuse of the provisions of the Act, that the debtor should also have been an agriculturist on the 1st October, 1937, as the proposal of affording relief to indebted agriculturists was made known that date. Thus, it is clear that the agriculturist character of the debtor is not relevant for purpose of scaling down debts under the Act except with reference to these three dates, and it is immaterial whether or not the debtor had such character when the debt was originally incurred where it was incurred prior to the 1st October, 1937.

4. Turning now to the main question whether the petitioner can be said to be a judgment-debtor within the meaning of Section 19, it will be observed that the definition of that term in Section 2(10), Civil Procedure Code, as meaning "any person against whom a decree has been passed or an order capable of execution has been made" has not been incorporated in this Act. On the other hand, the definition of debt in Section 3(iii) includes debts payable under a decree or order of a Court. According to the decision in Perianna v. Sellappa AIR1939Mad186 , the liability of the. petitioner as the purchaser of the properties subject to the mortgage decree is a debt within the meaning of the Act. In these circumstances, if the contention of the respondent were to be accepted, it would have the startling result, that though the petitioner as well as his liability comes within the purview of Section 7 which provides that the debt shall be scaled down in accordance with the provisions of this Chapter, that is, of Chapter II of the Act which contains the substantive provisions as to scaling down of debts, he would be excluded from such relief by reason of the procedure provided in Section 19 for obtaining it being inapplicable to him. Oh the other hand, it stands to reason that the procedure prov