Conjunctive reading of "and" under the Oudh Laws Act requires all conditions before reducing foreclosure pre-emption payment.

The Oudh Laws Act is construed to require the word "and" in Section 13(d) and the concluding paragraph of Section 13 to be read conjunctively. Read with Sections 10, 11 and 12, the scheme ties the amount payable in foreclosure cases to the real mortgage consideration, not merely the market value of the property. The court's approach is that "and" should depart from its ordinary meaning only where context produces absurdity, anomaly, or defeats legislative intention. On that interpretation, all stated conditions must be proved before the amount payable can be reduced; reading the provision disjunctively was rejected.

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Issues: Whether the word "and" in Section 13(d) and the concluding paragraph of Section 13 of the Oudh Laws Act is to be read conjunctively, so that all the stated conditions must exist before the court can reduce the amount payable in a foreclosure pre-emption suit.

Analysis: The text of Section 13, read with Sections 10, 11 and 12, shows a scheme in which the amount payable in foreclosure cases is tied to the real mortgage consideration and not merely to the market value of the property. The ordinary grammatical meaning of "and" is conjunctive, and departure from that meaning is justified only where the context creates absurdity, anomaly, or defeats legislative intention. Reading "and" as "or" would allow reduction of the amount payable even when the mortgage debt is truly due and honestly claimed, which would be inconsistent with the statutory scheme governing sales and foreclosure.

Conclusion: The word "and" must be read conjunctively, and all the stated conditions must be proved before the court can reduce the amount payable; the contrary interpretation was rejected.

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