Jharkhand High Court: Sujit Narayan Prasad, J. dismissed the writ petition filed under Article 227 of the Constitution of India.
This is a case of respondents/plaintiff where a petition was filed on 01-02-2018 about some particular documents which could not have been filed at the time of presenting the plaint. On further, cross-examination of the document’s relevancy was assessed and it led the plaintiffs to file the petition where they requested leave from the trial court for marking those documents.
The petitioners had objected to the filed the petition on the grounds that no reason was given as to what held the plaintiffs from protecting the said documents along with the complaint. Another point of contention was that the petition was filed under the provision of Section 5 of Limitation Act, 1963 instead of Order 7 Rule 14 (3) of The Code Of Civil Procedure, 1908. It was because the Trial Court had the power for granting such relief under the CPC. Hence, the petition should not have been allowed but as per Mr Rajeeva Sharma, the learned counsel for the petitioners, the trial court allowed the petition without considering the facts. As a result of this the present writ petition was filed.
Mr M. Jalisur, the learned counsel appearing for the respondent has referred to the provision of Order 7 Rule 14 (3) of the CPC in defence to order dated 06-03-2018. It was further submitted by the counsel that the writ petition has no merit on the ground that the trial court had granted liberty to cross-examine the witnesses produced by the plaintiff. The respondents had filed an interlocutory application for vacating the stay on the order granted by the court by issuing a notice to the respondent on 10-07-2018.
The High Court after considering all the legalities and referring to the provisions of Order 7 Rule 14 (3) of the CPC deemed it fit and fair that the power to grant relief, taking into consideration the relevancy of the documents.
In the following case, the petition has been filed by the plaintiff under Section 5 of Limitation Act rather than Order 7 Rule 14 (3) of the CPC. The court relied on the judgment rendered by the Supreme Court of India in P.K. Palanisamy v. N. Arumugham, (2009) 9 SCC 173 where it was held that mentioning of the wrong provision or not mentioning that provision will not make the order invalid, if the court and/or statutory authority have the requisite jurisdiction therefore.
Another question taken into consideration is the question of prejudice. The court on the following question held that in terms of the provision of Order 7 Rule 14 (3) of the CPC give liberty of cross-examining the witnesses to the petitioner.
Thus, as per the Supervisory jurisdiction in Article 227 of the Constitution of India, the Court was not mistaken in warranting any interference by the court. Therefore, the writ petition failed and Interim Order dated 10-07-2018 was vacated. [Jay Shankar Yadav v. Bhola Yadav, 2019 SCC OnLine Jhar 1509, decided on 07-11-2019]
