AMENDMENT OF PLEADINGS ORDER VI

Pleading are the statements which are backbone of every civil suit. No suit will come into existence if there no pleadings. Pleading have been defined in Order 6 Rule 1 which states that pleading can be plaint or written statement. Plaint is the statement filed by the plaintiff in the Civil Court to prove his claim whereas written statement are the statements which is defined in Order 8 Rule 1 which states that defendant should file written statement in 30 days from the date of issuance the summons. Written statement is filed by the defendant for his defence. Plaint has not defined in CPC but it is pleading which is filed by the plaintiff from which civil suit is initiate.

Amendment of pleadings means making changes to the formal written statement submitted by parties in a court case. In India, according to the CPC, parties can make these changes during a trial with the court’s permission. The purpose of amending pleadings is to make sure that the real issues in the case are addressed and that justice is served. However, there are conditions for making these changes, such as not causing harm to the other party and following the time limits set by the court.

ESSENTIALS OF PLEADINGS:

1. It should be properly drafted.
2. Does not contain any vague or unambiguous statement.
3. Plaintiff define Cause of Action from pleadings
4. Pleading should only contain Material Facts
5. Defendant should defend himself by filing written statement.

IMPORTANCE OF AMENDMENT OF PLEADINGS:

• 1. Ensuring Justice: Amendment of pleadings helps ensure that justice is served. It allows parties to correct errors or omissions in their defence, making their case presentation more effective. It also helps address new issues that may arise during the trial, ensuring that the real matters in dispute are properly addressed.
• 2. Resolving Disputes: Amendments to pleadings help parties identify and resolve key issues in a dispute more effectively. This leads to more accurate and fair dispute resolution, saving time, reducing the need for additional evidence or hearings and promoting settlements between parties.
• 3. Avoiding Delays: Allowing parties to amend their pleadings before the trial begins helps prevent delays. By addressing problems or omissions early on, the risk of delays due to introducing new evidence or arguments is reduced. This speeds up case resolution, lightens the burden on the justice system and improves efficiency.
• 4. Promoting Fairness: Amending pleadings promotes fairness in the justice system. It prevents one party from gaining an unfair advantage over the other by allowing both sides an equal opportunity to present their case.

CONDITIONS FOR AMENDMENT OF PLEADINGS:

• 1. Necessity for Dispute Resolution: The proposed amendment must be necessary to resolve the dispute between the parties. The court assesses whether the change is essential to ensure the proper resolution of the issues in dispute and the delivery of justice.
• 2. Absence of Prejudice to the Other Party: Amendments should not unfairly prejudice the other party. The court examines whether the proposed change would harm the opposing party through delays, increased costs, or substantive alterations to the case.
• 3. Good Faith: The requested amendment must be made in good faith. The court considers whether the party seeking the change has a legitimate reason and isn’t attempting to deceive the court or gain an unfair advantage.
• 4. Compliance with Time Limits: Proposed amendments must adhere to any court-imposed deadlines. Parties must file these changes within the timeframes specified by the court for pleading submissions.
• 5. Change in Nature of the Case: If allowing the amendment would substantially alter the nature of the case or the claims involved.
• 6. New Cause of Action: When the proposed amendment introduces a new cause of action, leading to a different legal basis for the case.
• 7. Defeat of Law of Limitation: If the amendment would result in the case falling outside the applicable statute of limitations.

WHAT CAN BE AMENDED?

1. Plaint filed by Plaintiff
2. Written Statement by Defendant

CONDITIONS FOR GRANTING AMENDMENT

• 1. No Injustice to the Other Party: The amendment should not cause unfair harm or prejudice to the opposing party.
• 2. Necessary for Determining Real Controversy: The proposed amendment must be necessary to determine the actual dispute between the parties.

ORDER VI RULE 17: Amendment of pleadings.—

The Court may at any stage of the proceedings allow either party to alter or amend his pleadings in such manner and on such terms as may be just, and all such amendments shall be made as may be necessary for the purpose of determining the real questions in controversy between the parties:
Provided that no application for amendment shall be allowed after the trial has commenced, unless the Court comes to the conclusion that in spite of due diligence, the party could not have raised the matter before the commencement of trial.

RULE 18. Failure to amend after Order.—

If a party who has obtained an order for leave to amend does not amend accordingly within the time limited for that purpose by the order, or if no time is thereby limited then within fourteen days from the date of the order, he shall not be permitted to amend after the expiration of such limited time as aforesaid or of such fourteen days, as the case may be, unless the time is extended by the Court.]

RELEVANT CASE LAWS

Jai Jai Ram Manohar Lal v. National Bldg. Material Supply AIR 1969 SC 1267

Facts: Manohar Lal s/o. Jai Jai Ram commenced an action in the Court of the Subordinate Judge, Nainital, for a decree for Rs. 10,139/12 being the value of timber supplied to the defendant – the National Building Material Supply, Gurgaon.The action was initiated in the name of “Jai Jai Ram Manohar Lal” which was the name in which the business was carried on.The defendant by its written statement contended that the plaintiff was an unregistered firm and on that account incompetent to sue. Manoharlal applied for leave to describe himself in the cause title as “Manohar Lal proprietor ofJai Jai Ram Manohar Lal” and in paragraph 1 to state that he carried on the business in timber in the name of Jai Jai Ram Manohar Lal.he Trial Judge decreed the claim for Rs. 6,568/6/3. Against that decree an appeal was preferred to the High Court of Allahabad. The High Court being of the view that the action was
instituted in the name of a “non-existing person” and Manohar Lal having failed to aver in the application for amendment that action was instituted in the name of “Jai Jai Ram Manohar Lal” on account of some bona fide mistake or omission, the Subordinate Judge was incompetent to grant leave to amend the plaint.
Issue: Whether a plaint filed in a court in India in the name of a firm doing business outside India is a nullity ?
Judgement: The plaintiff was competent to sue in his own name as Manager of the Hindu undivided family to which the business belonged; he says he sued on behalf of the family in the business name. The observations made by the High Court that the application for amendment of the plaint could not be granted because there was no averment therein that the misdescription was on account of a bona fide mistake, and on that account the suit must fail, cannot be accepted. In our view, there is no rule that unless in an application for amendment of the plaint it is expressly averred that the error, omission or misdescription is due to a bona fide mistake, the Court has no power to grant leave to amend the plaint. The power to grant amendment of the pleadings is intended to serve the ends of justice and is not governed by any such narrow or technical limitations. Since the name in which the action was instituted was merely a misdescription of the original plaintiff, no question of limitation arises; the plaint must be deemed on amendment to have been instituted in the name of the real plaintiff on the date on which it was originally
instituted.
The Court ruled the order passed by the Trial Court in granting the amendment was clearly right, and the High Court was in error in dismissing the suit on a technicality wholly unrelated to the merits of the dispute. The appeal is allowed and the decree passed by the High Court is set aside.

M/s. Ganesh Trading Co. v. Moji Ram AIR 1978 SC 484

Facts: In this case the plaintiff M/s Ganesh Trading & Co. had filed a suit through Shri Jai Prakash, a partner of that firm based on promissory note for recovery of Rs. 68000/-. After filing of the written statement was filed, the plaintiff filed an application for amendment of pleading on the ground of inadvertent omission to mention the material fact that the firm had been dissolved before the institution of the suit to enable the court to consider and decide the subject matter of the suit in its true perspective and to meet ends of justice. The Trial Court and the High Court refused to allow amendment of pleading on the ground that it would amount to the introduction of a new time barred cause of action. The plaintiff challenged the order before the Supreme Court.
Issue: Whether the amendment of the pleadings will arise a new cause of action in the pleading?
Judgement: The Court observed that Procedural law is intended to facilitate and not to obstruct the course of substantive justice. Provisions relating to pleadings in civil cases are meant to give to each side intimation of the case of the other so that it may enable Courts to determine what is really at issue between parties, and to prevent deviations from the course. The Court further observed that, the suit having been instituted by one of the partners of a dissolved firm, the mere specification of the capacity in which the suit was filed could not change the character of the suit or the case. The Court further observed that the amended pleading will not make any difference to the rest of the pleadings or to the cause of action.
The Court finally held that the amendment of pleading will not alter the cause of action and the Court allowed the appeal to amend the pleadings and set aside the orders of the Trial Court and the High Court.

Dalip Kaur v. Major Singh AIR 1996 P & H 107

Facts: In this case, the plaintiff filed an application under Order 6, Rule 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 seeking amendment of the plaint by making a prayer for declaring the judgment and decree dated 20 July 1993 passed in Civil Suit No. 135 of 6 February 1990 entitled ‘Major Singh v. Balbir Kaur‘ as null and void and ineffective against the rights of the plaintiff. The application for amendment was dismissed mainly on the ground that the same has been filed without explaining the alleged inordinate delay.
Issue: Whether the amendment of plaint refused on the basis of without delay was valid?
Judgement: The Court observed the purpose and object of Order 6, Rule 17, CPC is to allow either party to alter or amend his pleadings in such manner and on such terms as may be just. The power to allow the amendment is wide and can be exercised at any stage of the proceedings in the interest of justice on the basis of guidelines laid down by various High Courts and the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. The Court further said the amendment of pleading cannot be claimed as a matter of right and under all circumstances. The circumstances may differ from case to case, and it would depend upon the facts of each individual case keeping in view the object that the Courts are to do substantial justice and not to punish a party on technical grounds.The Court gave guidelines on the basis of different judgments dealing with the applications for amendment of the pleadings: –
(i) All amendments should be allowed which are necessary for determination of the real controversies in the suit;
(ii) the proposed amendment should not alter and be a substitute of the cause of action on the basis of which the original Us was raised;
(iii) inconsistent and contradictory allegations in negation to the admitted position of facts or mutually destructive allegations of facts would not be allowed to be incorporated by means of amendment
(iv) proposed amendments should not cause prejudice to the other side which cannot be compensated by means of costs;
(v) amendment of a claim or relief barred by time should not be allowed;
(vi) no amendment should be allowed which amounts to or results in defeating a legal right to the opposite party on account of lapse of time;
(vii) no party should suffer on account of the technicalities of law and the amendment should be allowed to minimize the litigation between the parties;
(viii) the delay in filing the petitions for amendment of the pleadings should be properly compensated by costs;
(ix) error or mistake which if not fraudulent should not be made on ground for rejecting the application for amendments of pleadings.
The Court allowed the plaintiff to amend the plaint subject to the cost of Rs 1000/-.

B.K. Narayana Pillai v. Parameswaran Pillai (2000) 1 SCC 712

PRESENT CASE

Q. 3/2020. Since the amendment application was made after the commencement of the trial, X and Y must satisfy the court that, despite due diligence, they could not have raised this issue earlier as required under Order 6 Rule 17 CPC. The court may allow the amendment to implead X and Y as plaintiffs if the due diligence requirement under Order 6 Rule 17 CPC is satisfied.

Q. 2A/2019. B’s application to amend the written statement should be dismissed. The admission that B was a tenant is binding unless B can demonstrate a clear, just, and bona fide reason for the change. Courts are reluctant to permit withdrawal of admissions that alter the nature of the defense and cause prejudice to the opposing party.

Q. 2A/2018. The court is likely to allow the amendment, permitting Ghasita Ram to sue in his own name, provided:

1. The mistake is bona fide (it was a genuine mistake, not an attempt to circumvent the law).
2. It does not alter the cause of action (the claim remains the same, only the description of the plaintiff changes).
3. It is necessary for determining the real controversy.