Entirety Of Plaint Averments Have To Be Taken Into Account While Considering A Plea Seeking Rejection Of Plaint: SC [Read Order]

The entirety of the averments in the plaint have to be taken into account while considering a plea seeking rejection of plaint, the Supreme Court has reiterated.

As per Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a plaint shall be rejected in the following cases:-(a) where it does not disclose a cause of action; b) where the relief claimed is undervalued, and the plaintiff, on being required by the Court to correct the valuation within a time to be fixed by the Court, fails to do so; (c) where the relief claimed is properly valued but the plaint is written upon paper insufficiently stamped, and the plaintiff, on being required by the Court to supply the requisite stamp-paper within a time to be fixed by the Court, fails to do so; (d) where the suit appears from the statement in the plaint to be barred by any law; (e) where it is not filed in duplicate; (f) where the plaintiff fails to comply with the provisions of rule 9.

In this case, a suit was filed by the plaintiff in 2016 to set aside a sale deed executed in 2008. The High Court had held that since litigation was generated after more than a period of 8 years, it is clearly hit by law of limitation and rejected the plaint.

In appeal [Shaukathussain Mohammed Patel vs. Khatunben Mohmmedbhai Polara], the bench of Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice R. Subhash Reddy noted that when the plaint is read in entirety, it is clear that the plaintiff had pleaded that the information in respect of the transaction came to the knowledge only in the year 2013-2014, and that the plaintiff was always in possession of the property. In the entirety of the circumstances, as pleaded in the plaint, the issues raised in the matter were certainly required to be considered on merits, the bench said while setting aside the High Court order. 

This principle has been stated in various judgments of the Apex Court. For instance, in Raptakos Brett & Co.Ltd. v. Ganesh Property (1998 (7) SCC 184), it was observed thus:

There cannot be any compartmentalization, dissection, segregation and inversions of the language of various paragraphs in the plaint. If such a course is adopted it would run counter to the cardinal canon of interpretation according to which a pleading has to be read as a whole to ascertain its true import. It is not permissible to cull out a sentence or a passage and to read it out of the context in isolation. Although it is the substance and not merely the form that has to be looked into, the pleading has to be construed as it stands without addition or subtraction or words or change of its apparent grammatical sense. The intention of the party concerned is to be gathered primarily from the tenor and terms of his pleadings taken as a whole. At the same time it should be borne in mind that no pedantic approach should be adopted to defeat justice on hair- splitting technicalities.

In Hardesh Ores Pvt. Ltd vs M/S. Hede And Company (2006) 5 SCC 658, it was held that the test is whether the averments made in the plaint if taken to be correct in their entirety a decree would be passed.  

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