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Judgment
Byers, J.—The petitioner challenges the jurisdiction of the executing Court to sell his property in execution of the decree against him, his
objection being that he had already made an application for the settlement of his debts u/s 1, Madras Debt Conciliation Act, and, therefore, u/s 25
of the Act the executing Court was powerless to proceed further until that application had been dismissed. The sale proceedings were once
adjourned but on the adjourned date it transpired that the application made to the Board was defective in material particulars. The Board, instead
of following the mandatory provisions of Section 7 of the Act, chose to return the application for amendment. It was in the interval between this
return and its re-presentation that the sale was held and the learned District Munsif took the view that the order directing the return of the
application for amendment was equivalent to an order of rejection u/s 7 of the Act. It is possible also to take another view, namely, that because
the application did not contain the statutory particulars u/s 6 of the Act, it was not an application within the meaning of S. & read with Sections 5
and 6 of the Act and consequently gave the debtor no protection u/s 25. The learned advocate for the decree-holder relies on the decision in
Seshamma v. Debt Conciliation Board, Nandyal AIR 1942 Mad. 405 in which the Chief Justice and Kuppuswami Ayyar J. held that where a
defective application was returned for the rectification of certain defects and subsequently re-presented, the period of one year u/s 17 of the Act
runs not from the date of its original presentation but from the date when it was re-presented in its correct form. This means that an application
must be deemed to have been made when it is made in accordance with the statutory requirements of Sections 4, 5 and 6. In this view of the
matter it follows that the petitioner''s application was not an application within the meaning of the Act and, therefore, he was not entitled to a stay of
proceedings u/s 25. There was no irregularity in the sale and this petition is ordered to be dismissed.