Rango Ramchanda Kulkarni vs Narayan Rayaji Kulkarni

Lokur, J.—This is an application in revision against an order of the Joint First Class Subordinate Judge at Dharwar refusing to transfer the opponent''s darkhast against the petitioner to the Board at Navalgund u/s 37 of the Bombay Agricultural Debtors Relief Act, 1939. One of the grounds for rejecting the petitioner''s application for such transfer is that the amount of his debts exceeded Rs. 15,000 on, January 1, 1939, when the Act came into force. It is now urged that the date, on which his debt should be less than Rs. 15,000 should be taken as the date of the order and not the date on which the Act came into force. Section 37 provides that all pending suits in which the question involved is the recovery of any debt from a person who is a debtor under the Act, if the total amount of the debts due from such debtor is not more than Rs. 15,000 should be transferred to the Board to which an application for adjustment of debts of such person u/s 17 lies. The date on which the amount of the debts is to be determined is not specified, as in Section 38, where the date is specified as January 1, 1939. But the reason for the omission is not far to seek. u/s 37 the suit is to be transferred to the Board to which an application for adjustment of debts of such person u/s 17 lies, and Section 26 provides that no application u/s 17 shall be entertained by the Board unless the total amount of debts due from the debtor concerned is not more than Rs. 15,000 on January 1, 1939. Hence if his debts exceeded Rs. 15,000 on January 1, 1939, then the Board cannot entertain any application u/s 17, and when Section 37 refers to the transfer of the suit to the Board to which an application for adjustment of debts lies u/s 17, it means that the debtor''s debts must not be in excess of Rs. 15,000 on January 1, 1939, as provided in Section 26. Hence the material date, even for the purposes of Section 37, is January 1, 1939, and the lower Court has held that on that day the petitioner''s debts exceeded Rs. 15,000. That is a finding of fact which cannot be interfered with in revision. The rule is, therefore, discharged with costs.