Supreme Court: In a special leave petition (‘SLP’), filed against the Judgment and Order passed by the Calcutta High Court, wherein the Court upheld the decision of the Trial Court allowing amendment of plaint, the division bench of Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Kumar, JJ. has issued notice.
Due to the failure of amicable partition of the property in suit between the respondent and petitioner, the respondent filed the Title Suit, seeking decree for partition declaring 1/7th share in the suit property. Further, the respondents filed at least five different applications which were rejected / dismissed as withdrawn. Furthermore, subsequent to the commencement of the evidences in Title Suit, the respondent once again submitted an amendment application under Order VI Rule 17 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908, seeking the modification of the plaint to incorporate some evidence. The Trial Court, vide its order dated 11-12-2006, granted approval to the said amendment application filed by the respondent, which was upheld by the High Court. Thus, the petitioner filed the present petition.
The petitioner submitted that the Courts below failed to appreciate that the long delay of filing the amendment application regarding the facts which was available to the respondent since long has an effect of derailing the adjudication process which had progressed substantially since 2016. The Courts failed to appreciate the judgment in LIC v. Sanjeev Builders (P) Ltd., 2022 SCC OnLine SC 1128 wherein, the Court had categorically stated “that the amendment which are time barred, malafide and has an effect of changing the nature of the suit” shall have to be disallowed”. Therefore, the impugned order should have set aside the order of the Trial Court which failed to appreciate that the entire amendment which was sought to be introduced and incorporated in the plaint regarding the joint properties were all malafide in nature with an intention to change the nature and character of the suit and derail the proceedings and obstruct the progress of the partition suit which is in the stage of recording of evidence.
The petitioner further contended that similar prayers were withdrawn by the respondent on five different occasions and thereafter it was again prayed for inclusion / amendment. Hence, the malafide intention of the respondent should be considered.
The Court issued notice in the present SLP.
[Ranjan Das v. Dipankar Das, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 32, Order dated 08-01-2024]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For Petitioner: Advocate-On-Record Swarnendu Chatterjee, Advocate Deepakshi Garg, Advocate Yashwardhan Singh
