Payment of debt in instalments.

(1) Notwithstanding any law, custom, contract, or decree of Court to the contrary, an agriculturist shall be entitled to pay within four months of the commencement of this Act the interest due on any debt due by him up to the commencement of this Act and one-eighth of the principal outstanding or one-fourth of the total amount outstanding, whichever is less, and the balance of the debt in three equal annual instalments on or before the 1st July of each of the succeeding three years with interest on such instalment up to that date. Explanation.--In the case of a decree, the amount decreed shall be deemed to be the principal. (2) Where, in respect of a decree for debt passed before the commencement of this Act, a debtor fails to make any one of the payments specified in sub-section (1) the decree holder shall be entitled to execute the decree in respect of the instalment which is in default. (3) In any suit filed after the commencement of this Act, the Court in decreeing the suit shall provide for the immediate payment of such instalment or instalments as would have become due under the provisions of sub-section (1) and the balance in further instalments as specified therein. (4) Where in any suit for the recovery of a debt pending at the commencement of this Act, the debtor claims to be an agriculturist, the Court shall, if the debtor is an agriculturist, pass a decree for immediate payment of such instalment or instalments as would have become payable under the provisions of sub-section (1) and the balance in further instalments as specified therein. (5) Nothing contained in this Act shall bar the Court from passing a decree or making an order in an application for execution of the decree under such terms and conditions as may be more favourable to the debtor than those provided for in this section either of its own motion upon a consideration of all the circumstances of the case or upon an agreement between the parties. (6) Where in any suit to recover a debt or in any application for the execution of a decree therefor the debt is payable by an agriculturist jointly or jointly and severally with a non-agriculturist, the Court shall pass a decree or make an order for the payment of the debt found due from the agriculturist.