Section 152 of the Civil Procedure Code allows for the correction of clerical or arithmetical mistakes in judgments, decrees, or orders, or errors arising from any accidental slip or omission, including those originating from documents copied into the plaint.

Krishnan Pandalai, J.

1. This is a petition to revise the order of the Subordinate Judge of Narsapur dismissing an application under Section 152, Civil Procedure Code, to amend a preliminary decree obtained by the petitioners as plaintiffs in a suit upon a mortgage executed by the ancestors of defendants 1 to 5. The only other person whom it is necessary to refer to is the 7th defendant, the only contesting respondent to this petition, who was added as defendant, because he had purchased some of the mortgaged properties subject to the mortgage sued upon. Defences were raised on the merits by defendants 1 to 5., The 7th defendant pleaded that the properties purchased by him should not be proceeded against until the other mortgaged properties had been sold. There was an issue arising from the plaintiffs allegations that the survey numbers of two of the properties, items 6 and 8 in the plaint schedule, were wrongly entered in the mortgage deed. All these contentions were disposed of by the findings of the learned Judge. On the last question he found that there had been an error in the mortgage deed and he ordered that the right survey numbers should be put into the decree. The present petition arose because the petitioners discovered after the preliminary decree was passed that erroneous survey numbers had crept into the plaint schedule in respect of five other properties, namely, items 2, 3, 9, 11 and 12. To take only one as an instance, for item 2 the survey number given in the mortgage deed was 187. It was so copied into the plaint and therefore it was copied into the preliminary decree. The right number, it appears, is 187-1. The other errors are alleged to be similar. The plaintiffs thereupon filed a petition to correct these errors in the decree. Their ground was that the errors were due to mistake or inadvertence, that they were strangers to the village in which the properties lay and that the numbers as stated in the mortgage deed were furnished by the mortgagor and the karnam. They therefore asked that the mistake should be rectified. The only opposing party appears to have been the 7th defendant. His objections were (1) that the petition was incompetent because a suit for rectification was the only remedy open to the petitioners in the circumstances, (2) that the mistake was neither due to inadvertence nor recently discovered as the petitioners alleged, (3) that the alleged mistakes were not mistakes at all, and (4) that his interest as bona, fide purchaser would be prejudiced by the proposed corrections. The learned Judge did not go into the merits of the application. He dismissed it on the ground that it was incompetent. The present petition is concerned only with that opinion.

2. For the purpose of this petition, it has to be assumed that the petitioners will be able to establish their allegations that the wrong survey numbers were entered because of mistake or inadvertence, that they became aware of the errors after the preliminary decree and lastly that the errors are really errors by which is meant that there is or can be no dispute as to the identity of the properties mortgaged. It does not now arise whether in that case the 7th defendants plea of bona fide purchaser will avail to defeat a mortgage subject to which he bought. The question is, whether, if these facts can be established, the petitioners could have their remedy by way of amendment or were bound to resort to a suit for rectification, or, as the learned Judge puts it, to a petition for review. In coming to this conclusion the learned Judge has relied upon three cases: Fakaruddin Mahomed Ahsan v. The Official Trustee of Bengal (1884) I.L.R. 10 C. 538, Munuswami Filial v. Mahdi Flussain Khan Sahib (1925) 59 M.L.J. 655 and Fathambi v. Mytheen Bibi (1901) 12 M.L.J. 96. I have referred to them They have no application to the case. The learned Advocate for the respondents also does not place much reliance upon them. In all these cases, what was decide