JUDGMENT
1. The appellant is the judgment-debtor in certain execution proceedings in which agricultural land belonging to him was ordered to be sold. The land was not ancestral within the meaning of the notification under which execution of decrees for sale of ancestral property had to be transferred to the Collector. It was however revenue paying land. All the execution proceedings had been taken in the civil Court and the sale alone was to take place through the Collector. The sale was fixed for 20th July 1932. Before it could take place the judgment-debtor made an application pointing out that under a recent notification (No. 576-I-A-93), the execution of decrees in which agricultural land is to be sold should be transferred to the Collector. The notification mentioned modifies the earlier notification of 1911 so as to extend its application to all agricultural land ancestral or otherwise. The judgment-debtor’s objection was disallowed by the lower Court which held that the amending notification cannot have retrospective effect, the -order for sale having been passed long before the notification.
2. The judgment-debtor has preferred the present appeal. It is argued on his behalf that the question is only one of procedure and the notification relied on by him must apply not only to the execution proceedings which may be instituted after it was issued but also to pending execution proceedings. We think that this contention is correct. The whole object of the notification was to have sales of agricultural lands, ordered to be sold in execution of decrees, conducted under the immediate ‘supervision of the Collector who might devise means of satisfying the decree without recourse to the necessity of selling the land. To hold that the notification applies only to execution proceedings instituted after its date would be to deprive it of much of its utility.
3. For these reasons we hold that the appellant’s objection was correct and the proceedings for execution of decree should be transferred to the Collector in terms of the notification referred to. The order of the lower Court is set aside and the case is returned to that Court with the direction that the procedure laid down by the rules for transmission of execution cases to the Collector be followed. The appeal is allowed with costs.
