KONDAVEETI PRANCHIS Vs. MALLARAPU LURDANIMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The questions of frequent application arise in this Civil Revision Petition: i) Whether the provisions of Rule 3-A of Order XVIII C.P.C., are mandatory; and ii) Whether the Court can grant permission to a party to the suit/proceedings to examine himself as a witness after he had already examined other witnesses on his behalf.

(2.) The questions arise in the following circumstances: The petitioner is plaintiff in O.S. No. 80 of 1986 on the file of the I Additional Subordinate Judge, Warangal. The sole respondent is defendant No. 6 in the said suit. For the sake of convenience, the parties herein will be referred to as per their array in the suit. The suit was filed for perpetual injunction against 14 defendants restraining them from interfering with the plaintiffs I possession of the suit land. After the plaintiff closed his evidence, the sixth defendant examined one witness as D.W. 1 Later she came into the witness box as D.W. 2. In the course of her examination in chief, an I objection was taken by the plaintiff that in view of the provisions of Rule 3-A of Order XVIII, the sixth defendant cannot appear as a witness. The objection was over ruled by the learned trial Judge by his order dated October 7, 1993. The plaintiff challenged the validity of that order in C.R.P. No. 4109 of 1993. When the C.R.P., came up for hearing before my learned brother A. Gopala Rao, J., it was brought to his notice that an application was filed seeking permission of the Court to examine the sixth defendant as a witness as D.W. 2 and that application was pending. On December 13, 1993, the learned Judge disposed of the C.R P., giving a direction to the trial court to pass appropriate orders on the said petition within two weeks from the date of receipt of the order. Thereafter that application was allowed by the trial Court on February 1,1994. It is the correctness of that order that is assailed in this Civil Revision Petition.

(3.) Sri Narasimha Reddy, the learned counsel for the petitioner urged two contentions before me: i) that the provisions of Order XVIII Rule 3-A are mandatory, so, the sixth defendant cannot appear as a witness as D.W. 2 that is, after examining other witnesses on her behalf; and ii) that in any event the sixth defendant cannot seek the permission of the Court to examine herself as D.W. 2 after she had examined her first witness.