JUDGMENT

Simpson, A J C - This is an application under Section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The question is one of jurisdiction, so the first thing to look at is the plaint. There were two plaintiffs, Sidh Nath and Bindraban. The plaint set forth that plaintiffs and defendants were joint under-proprietors of the village of Shahzadpur and that the superior proprietor filed a suit for arrears of rent in the Rent Court and obtained a decree. He executed this decree (as he was entitled to do, the decree being joint) against the plaintiffs only. Consequently the plaintiffs brought a suit for contribution against the other under-proprietors. It so happens that plaintiff No. 2, Bindraban, is a lambardar. Accordingly it was pleaded in the Court of the Subordinate Judge that Section 108(16) of the Oudh Rent Act applied and that this was a suit by a lambardar against a joint lambardar for a compensation for revenue or rent paid by the lambardar on account of the joint lambardar. This plea was given effect to and the plaint was returned by the learned Subordinate Judge for presentation to the proper Court. The plaintiff appealed to the learned District Judge who dismissed his appeal taking the same view as the Court of first instance. No second appeal lies. Accordingly the plaintiff has come to this Court in revision claiming that the Courts below have failed to exercise a jurisdiction vested in them by law.

2. The order they wish this Court to pass is to set aside the order of the Courts below and to send the case back to the Subordinate Judge for decision. The opposite party does not object to this course, but his counsel points out that Consent of parties cannot confer jurisdiction, and expresses his own opinion as a lawyer that the case does fall under Section 108(16) of the Oudh Rent Act. In my opinion the case was rightly brought in the Civil Court. The fact that a decree was obtained and was executed alters the nature of the present suit. No doubt if the plaintiffs had made this payment simply on demand and not in order to satisfy the decree, their suit for contribution would have laid in the revenue Court, but the right of the superior proprietor to obtain rent from the under-proprietors or from their lambardars had merged in his decree. The only rights he possessed were to execute the decree. Every suit for contribution founded upon a decree is cognizable by the Civil Court. There is a decision of this Court which has some bearing on the case: Suraj Bakhsh Singh v. Raghubar Singh (1914) 1 O.L.J. 244. The question which was decided in that case was whether a suit for contribution brought by one under-proprietor against others in respect of the decree which he had satisfied, was cognizable by the Small Cause Court or by the Munsif. The question of the jurisdiction of the revenue Court was not considered, but if the learned Judge had believed that the case was exclusively cognizable by the revenue Courts he would have said so. It is true that in that case it does not appear whether either of the parties was a lambardar. But it was held in that case that the fact that there was a decree took the suit out of Article 41 of the second schedule of the Small Cause Courts Act (Act IX of 1887). It is by exactly similar reasoning that I arrive at the result that the existence of a decree here takes the case out of Section 108(16) of the Oudh Rent Act.

3. I, therefore, allow the application and set aside the order of the Courts below. The record will be sent back through the District Judge to the Subordinate Judge who will proceed to decide the case according to law. No order as to costs.