(Prayer: Petition (disposed of on 12-9-1952) under S. 115 of Act V of 1908 praying the High Court to revise the order of the Court of the District Munsif, Chidambaram, dated 30-11-1949 in I.A. No. 385 of 1949 in O.S. No. 302 of 1933.)

There is no reason whatever to interfere with the order passed by the learned District Munsif. The petitioner is the decree-holder. The respondent who was the first judgment debtor made an application on 3rd June 1949 under S. 19 of Madras Act IV of 1938 as amended by Act XXIII of 1948 for scaling down the decree which had been passed against him on 24th November 1933. The decree-holder raised a preliminary objection that the application was not maintainable on the ground that the judgment debtor had previously filed an application for stay under S. 20 of the Act and there was an order staying execution passed on 14th March 1946, but he did not file any application within 60 days thereafter and therefore the judgment debtor was not entitled to once more file an application for stay as he did and then file a substantive application under S.

19. It may be mentioned that prior to the present application under S. 19 there was another application under S. 20, and there was an order of stay passed on 17th March 1949 and it is not disputed that the present petition under S. 19 has been filed within the prescribed time from the date of that order.

The only question therefore is whether the judgment debtor not having filed an application under S. 19 within the prescribed time from the date of the stay order under S. 20 passed on his prior application, is now precluded from again filing another application under S. 20 followed by an application under S.

19. Undoubtedly, the judgment debtor would not have such a right, that is, a right to file successive applications under S. 20 or S. 19 if the reliefs which he claims as being entitled to are the same in the several applications. But at the same time it is equally clear that if a subsequent application is based upon a provision of law not in existence at the time of a prior application of his he will not be debarred from filing the later application simply because he had filed a prior application when the state of law did not entitle him to the relief to which he became entitled by a subsequent change in the law. The judgment debtor in this case alleges that he has become entitled to relief under the provisions of the Amending Act XXIII of 1948, relief which was not available to him before the amendment. On this footing, the second application was certainly maintainable. The learned District Munsif was right in holding that the prior application under S. 20 filed in 1946 will not be a bar to a fresh application under S. 20 after the Amending Act XXIII of 1948.

Learned Counsel for the petitioner is afraid that the order of the learned District Munsif may be understood as having finally decided the question of the applicability of the provisions of the Amending Act of 1948. In my opinion, any apprehension on this score is unfounded. The learned District Munsif has not finally decided as to the applicability of the new Act; he has only prima facie held on the allegations of the judgment debtor that there will be no bar on account of the prior application under S. 20 and that the petition was maintainable.

The revision petition is therefore dismissed with costs.