The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation and application of the relevant civil procedure and Madras Act provisions in the context of setting aside a sale and scaling down a decree, particularly in relation to irregularities in the sale and the status of the appellants as agriculturists.

Wadsworth, J.

1. These two matters both arise out of a decree passed in 1929 for Rs. 23,799. On 6th July, 1935, in execution of that decree, a sale was held of two items of property. Item I was an inam village, item 2 was a less valuable property. An application was preferred under Order 21, Rule 90, Section 47 and Order 21, Rule 72(3) of the Civil Procedure Code, to set aside the sale. That application was dismissed by the lower Court on 6th March, 1943, in so far as: it related to the first item. On 18th March, 1943, the judgment-debtors filed an application under Section 19 of Madras Act IV of 1938, praying the Court to scale down the decree on the footing that they were agriculturists. The decree-holder objected that they were not agriculturists and that the decree had been fully satisfied by the sale which had just been confirmed. On 22nd March, 1943, the trial Court, without giving a finding on the question whether or not the applicants were agriculturists, dismissed the application on the ground that no decree subsisted. Against the order dismissing the application to set aside the sale CM.A. No. 372 of 1943 has been filed. Against the order dismissing the application under Section 19 of Act IV of 1938, C.R.P. No. 756 of 1943 was preferred. By reason of the amendment to Madras Act IV of 1938 under, Madras Act XV of 1943, the order under Section 19 has become retrospectively appeal able. The Civil Revision Petition has therefore been treated as a civil miscellaneous appeal, there being no question of any payment of deficit Court fee.

2. We will first deal with the contentions in C.M.A. No. 372. We must say at once that we do not consider that there are any grounds for setting aside the sale by reason of any material irregularity resulting in substantial injury. The irregularities upon which reliance is placed are two. Firstly, the Court ordered when each party placed a valuation on the property and the valuations were widely different, that the sale proclamation should embody both the valuations. By some oversight this direction was not carried out and the sale proclamation merely noted the figure of the upset price which was considerably higher than the valuation given by the decree-holder and considerably lower than the valuation given by the judgment-debtors. When the sale was held subject to this upset price for Rs. 30,000, there were no bidders. The upset price was subsequently reduced to Rs. 20,000 and the property was eventually sold to the decree-holder for Rs. 21,000. There are really no materials upon which we can hold that the price was inadequate or that the inadequacy of the price, if any, was due to this omission to publish these two widely divergent estimates of the value of the property. The other irregularity relied upon under Rule 90 is based on the fact that by some oversight, the amount of the decree was overstated in the sale proclamation. The decree-holder, having been allowed to bid and set off and the amount of the decree as stated in the proclamation being more than the amount of the price bid by the decree-holder, there was no cash deposit required from the decree-holder. The mistake was discovered eventually and the excess of the sale price over the true amount due under the decree was immediately deposited, but not within the fifteen days contemplated in Order 21, Rule 85 of the Civil Procedure Code. Granted that there has been an irregularity in this respect, it is difficult to see how it has occasioned any injury to the judgment-debtor. The effect of the overstatement of the amount of the decree was to make the decree-holder pay more for the property than he would presumably have paid otherwise and there is no basis for the assertion that the decree-holder was put into a position to drive other bidders away.

3. Turning to the contention that the sale should be set aside by reason of the provisions of Order 21, Rule 72(3), Civil Procedure Code, the facts are as follows : Before the firs