Revision under Article 226 challenging closure of plaintiff's evidence. Held, despite delay, one more effective opportunity to examine remaining evidence granted with costs to respondent.
Revision disposed with direction to trial court to grant one more effective opportunity to examine evidence, petitioner to pay Rs. 5,000 costs.
This page shows the compact analysis of this judgement. The full analysis — procedural history, issue-by-issue holdings with ratio and obiter, advocates, and paragraph-level evidence for every claim — is being added to the record in batches and will appear here when this judgement has been through it.
IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH
CR 245 of 2013 Date of Decision : January 16, 2013
Jagwinder Singh .....Petitioner VERSUS Harchand Singh
.....Respondent
CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE T.P.S.MANN
Present : Mr. H.S.Batth, Advocate
T.P.S. MANN, J. (Oral)
The plaintiff has filed the present revision under Article 227 of the Constitution of India for challenging the order passed by the trial Court on 23.10.2012 whereby his evidence stands closed by order of the Court.
A perusal of the impugned order would reveal that it was the last opportunity granted to the plaintiff to produce his entire evidence. Despite the same, no PW was present and a request was made by the counsel for the plaintiff for giving one more opportunity to conclude his entire evidence. Observing that the issues were framed on 24.5.2011 and the case had lingered on for long and the plaintiff had failed to produce his evidence despite last opportunity given, the trial Court found no justification
CR 245 of 2013
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to further adjourn the case for remaining evidence of the plaintiff.
Counsel for the petitioner has submitted that the petitioner had produced three witnesses before the trial Court on 12.10.2011 and submitted their affidavits by way of examinationin-chief. However, their cross-examination was deferred on request made by counsel for the defendant. On a couple of occasions thereafter, the defendant sought adjournment on the ground that the copies of the affidavits of PW1, PW2 and PW3 had not been supplied to him. Ultimately, on 14.12.2011 PW2 Gurdev Singh was partly cross-examined and the hearing was deferred for the reason that the Court time was over. Thereafter, an application was filed by the defendant for directing the plaintiff to produce the original of the pronote which application was disposed of by the trial Court on 11.1.2012. It is further submitted that on some of the occasions thereafter, the plaintiff was complacent in bringing the witnesses before the trial Court for examination. At the same time, one of his witnesses, namely, Avtar Singh was confined in jail and production warrants were sought. His prayer was accepted and the petitioner was granted last opportunity to produce his remaining witnesses. However, for reasons beyond his control, the petitioner was not able to produce his remaining evidence. Prayer has, accordingly, been made for granting one more effective opportunity to the petitioner
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to examine his remaining evidence.
After hearing counsel for the petitioner, this Court is of the view that one more effective opportunity is required to be granted to examine his remaining evidence for the reason that on a couple of occasions after PW1, PW2 and PW3 had submitted their respective affidavits by way of examination-in-chief it was the counsel for the defendant, who had been seeking adjournments for one reason or the other instead of crossexamining them. Further, one of the witnesses to be examined by the petitioner is stated to be confined in jail and his presence could be secured only in pursuance of the production warrants. At the same time, it may be noticed that the petitioner has also not cared to examine his entire evidence within a reasonable period after the framing of the issues.
Resultantly, the revision is disposed of with a direction to the trial Court to grant one more effective opportunity to the plaintiff-petitioner to examine his remaining evidence, subject to payment of Rs. 5,000/- as costs to be paid to the defendantrespondent.
( T.P.S. MANN ) JUDGE
January 16, 2013 ajay-1
3 issues framed by the court
Whether the plaintiff-petitioner should be granted one more effective opportunity to examine remaining evidence after being granted a last chance in the trial court.
Whether the delay in producing evidence is attributable to the defendant's requests for adjournments or the plaintiff's failure.
Whether costs should be awarded to the defendant for the direction allowing further evidence.
1 provisions across 1 enactments
Jagwinder Singh
Harchand Singh
T.P.S. Mann
As recorded by the court registry
Judgements on the same questions, provisions and authorities, from every court
