The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of the Agency Rules and the determination of whether the orders of the Assistant Agent and the Agent constituted decrees.

1. This is a petition asking us to direct the Agent to the Governor, Vizagapatam, to review his proceedings dismissing, as inadmissible, an appeal from a decision of the Assistant Agent.

2. A preliminary objection has been taken to our hearing the petition, that it does not lie, because the Agents disposal is not a decree, into which Rule 20. Vizagapatam Agency Rules applies. The question whether the Agents disposal is a decree is indistinguishable from the question whether the decision under appeal before him was likewise a decree. The Assistant Agent was dealing with what undoubtedly was described before him as a petition and was headed as presented under Order 21, Rule 58, C.P.C. The circumstances were that the present 1st respondent was claiming the property attached by the present petitioner in execution of her decree against the 2nd and other respondents. The Assistant Agent in dealing with the case appears to have eventually declined to decide the two issues originally framed, which related to the claimants title, and to have restricted his enquiry to possession with reference to the terms of Order 21, Rule 59. That was all in accordance with the character of the proceedings as resembling what in non-agency tracts are known as claim proceedings. In fact, however, the petitioner, who was then in the position of the 1st counter-petitioner, had expressly pleaded that the claim procedure under Order 21, Rule 58 was not in force in the agency tracts at all and had relied on a plea of title. The petitioner therefore, cannot be held in any degree responsible, if the Assistant Agent erred in treating the proceedings before him as claim proceedings or in limiting the scope, of the enquiry consistently with their being of that nature.

3. The law applicable is contained exclusively in the Agency Rules already referred to. The only provision for appeal is Rule 16. allowing an appeal from the Assistant Agent to the Agent, and there is, of course, the provision in Rule 20 for the powers and control exercisable by this Court. Those provisions apply only to decrees; and we have been able to find no provision for appeals against either orders passed in execution or other orders of a miscellaneous character. If then we are constrained to regard the Assistant Agents order as passed on a petition and as not constituting a decree we shall have to hold that the appeal to the Agent was rightly rejected by him and to dismiss the present petition. To support the position that orders in execution are not appealable there is a decision in Sri Sri Sri Vikramadeo Maharajulum Garu v. Sri Niladevi Pattamahadevi Garu (1902) I.L.R. 26 Mad. 266 and there is clearer authority in Venkatanagabushanam v. Mahalakshmi (1917) I.L.R. 41 Mad. 325 : 34 M.L.J. 524 to show that miscellaneous orders by an Agent or Assistant Agent can be displaced only by an application to the Governor in Council.

4. The result, however, is not, in our opinion, to limit a person in the 1st respondents position to a petition, as the means by which he can make his claim. The consequence is that, if he approaches the court in order to do so, he should be regarded rather as availing himself of the only remedy, which the law in the Agency tracts provides; that is, the institution of a suit. The fact that he himself described his action as a petition and referred to a provision of the Civil Procedure Code, which was wholly irrelevant, cannot prevent us from ascertaining what was the real character of the proceedings or from treating them as what they really were, especially when we have not been shown how any unfair prejudice to any of the parties to them is to be apprehended. The necessary averments for a suit by a claimant were contained in the 1st respondents petition and the proper defences were put forward in the petitioners counter petition. If the proper issues were not joined, that was, as already pointed out, through no fault of his. It may be observed that there is no reason wh