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Judgment
Rampini, J.—This is an appeal against a decision of the District Judge of Purneah, dated 30th April 1896. The suit is one for the setting aside of the sale of a putni taluk held under the provisions of the Putni Regulation, VIII of 1819.
The lower Courts have dismissed the suit.
The Plaintiff appeals. On his behalf two pleas have been urged : (1) that the Defendants'' amla led the Plaintiff to believe that the sale would be stayed and induced him to pay them Rs. 307 in cash; (2) that the notices of the sale were not duly published.
We think there is no force in the first of these contentions. It has been found by the lower Appellate Court that the Defendants'' amla had no authority to stay the sale, and that the Plaintiffs conduct, after making the payment, showed that he did not expect the payment made by him would be taken in full satisfaction of his debt. Further, it would seem that the amla tried to induce the Defendants'' manager to stay the sale, but without success So they did all, the Plaintiff had a right to expect them to do.
The second plea of the Appellants raises a question of some difficulty. The Appellant''s pleader urges that the notice of the sale that was affixed in the Collectorate was not published till the 18th Bysack, and he contends that it should have been published there not later than the 15th Bysack. We, however, agree with the lower Courts in thinking that the provision in sec. 8 of Regulation VIII of 1819 requiring the notice of sale to be published before the 15th Bysack applies to the notice to be published in the mofussil and not to the notice to be affixed at the Collectorate. The section, however, provides that on the zemindar presenting his petition to the Collector on the 1st day of Bysack, "the same shall then be stuck up in some conspicuous part of the cutchery." Now, it has been held by their Lordships of the Privy Council that due publication of the notices of a putni sale is essential, and that the zemindar who institutes the proceeding is exclusively responsible for its regularity in the case of the Maharaja of Burdwan v. Srimati Tara Soondari Debia L.R. 10 I.A. 19; a Full Bench of this Court has also decided that the expression due publication used by the Judicial Committee refers not only to the actual publication, but also to the time at which it is to be published. It has, therefore, been argued that when the section says that "the same shall then be stuck up in some conspicuous part of the cutchery," this means that it must be stuck up either immediately or before the service of the other notices referred to in the section or at least before the 15th Bysack.
But the word "then" is an ambiguous one, and does not necessarily mean "immediately.
It may mean "afterwards." Therefore, we think that if the petition be stuck up in a conspicuous part of the cutchery within a reasonable time before the sale, this will be a sufficient compliance with the provision of the section. The question then is whether, when the petition was affixed at the cutchery on the 18th Bysack, this was within a reasonable time of the sale, which took place on the 1st Jeysht. Having regard to the facts (1) that the law prescribes no definite time within which this petition must be stuck up: and (2) that the other notices were served in due time, so as to give due notice of the sale, we cannot say that the publication of the petition on the 18th Bysack was not within a reasonable time of the sale. We may add that in the case of Ahsanulla Khan Bahudur v. Hurri Churn Mozoomdar ILR 17 Cal. 480, it was held by this Court that " the publication of the petition to the Collector is not a substantial portion of the process to be observed by the zemindar, and that no injury could result to the putnidar or any one holding under him by the non-publication of this petition, which is only the method prescribed by the regulations for putting the executive machinery in motion." We therefore affirm the decision of the lower Appellate Court and dismiss the appeal with costs.
O''Kinealy, J.
I personally have had some difficulty in arriving at this conclusion. But we have the case of Ahsanulla Khan Bahadur v. Hurri Churn Mozoomdar ILR 17 Cal. 480, which has not been touched by the Full Bench decision of this Court, and I must follow it.