THAKKAR BABULAL DAYASHANKER Vs. MEHTA NATWARLAL KALURAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) * * * *

(2.) The question is whether a party to a suit can be permitted to raise subsequently a plea which is incompatible or inconsistent with the plea taken up on the earlier occasion in the earlier pleadings. The very genesis of the law of pleadings is that the Court and the receptive parties should have full knowledge of the case of the both parties so that the subseq- uent trial may proceed in that well defined channel and no prejudice is caused to either of the sides by rambling and meandering course of trial. This very principle is laid-down in Order 8 Rule 9 of the Civil Procedure Code which reads as follows: Rule 9. No pleading subsequent to the written statement of a defendant other than by way of defence to a set off shall be presented except by the leave of the Court and upon such terms as the Court thinks fit..... This legislative mandate has been laid-down in an imperative langu- age which is too clear to call for any aid of cannons of construction and the purpose underlying is that the parties must know as to what is the case of the other side which it is called upon to meet.

(3.) The same conclusion can be had also from the equally mandatory provisions of Order 6 Rule 7 of the Civil Procedure Code which read as under: Rule 7: No pleading shall except by way of amendment raise any new ground of claim or contain any allegation of fact inconsistent with the previous pleadings of the party pleading the same. Order 6 of the Civil Procedure Code dea-ls generally with the pleadings of both the plaintiff and the defendant and the legislative mandate quoted above is applicable both to the plaint and to the written statement. It is therefore clear that what has been stated once as an allegation of fact or as a ground of a claim or an attack has got to be stuck to by the parties and any change in that stand can be taken note of by the Court only by way of amendment which is permissible only under the established principles of law.