Courts possess inherent power under Section 151 CPC to dismiss suits rendered infructuous by supervening events.

The Respondent (original Plaintiff) was a lessee of two large tracts of salt lands in Village Kanjur, Mumbai, under two indentures of lease for 99 years commencing on 15 October 1917 and ending on 14 October 2016

The Applicants (Union of India) terminated these leases prematurely on 2 November 2004, leading the Respondent to file Suit No. 6256 of 2005 seeking a declaration that the termination was illegal and the leases remained valid and binding

During the pendency of the suit, the 99-year lease tenure naturally expired on 14 October 2016

The Applicants subsequently filed Notice of Motion No. 3788 of 2016 under Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC), seeking dismissal of the suit on the grounds that it had been rendered infructuous by the efflux of time

The City Civil Court rejected the motion on 11 November 2022, primarily to maintain existing interim orders

The Applicants challenged this rejection via the present Revision Application

1. Whether a civil court can exercise inherent powers under Section 151 of the CPC to dismiss a suit that has been rendered infructuous due to supervening events during its pendency

2. Whether the potential for a future amendment to the plaint (regarding lease renewal) justifies keeping an otherwise infructuous suit alive on the court’s file

The Court primarily applied Section 151 of the CPC, which preserves the inherent power of the court to make orders necessary for the ends of justice or to prevent abuse of process

It relied heavily on the precedent in Shipping Corporation of India Ltd. v. Machado Brothers, which established that if a suit becomes infructuous due to subsequent events, it is the court's duty ex debito justitiae to dispose of the litigation, and Section 151 is the appropriate vehicle for such dismissal when no other specific provision (like Order VII Rule 11) applies to supervening facts

The court distinguished National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences v. C. Parameshwar and My Palace Mutually Aided Co-operative Society v. B. Mahesh, noting that while Section 151 cannot override express statutory prohibitions or bypass available alternative remedies, it remains applicable where no specific provision exists to address a suit that loses its cause of action mid-litigation

The Court reasoned that the primary relief sought in the 2005 suit—a declaration of the lease's subsistence—was tethered to the original 99-year term ending in 2016

Once that term expired by efflux of time, the cause of action regarding the 2004 termination became academic, as the Respondent’s right to occupy the land under the original deeds had independently ceased

The Court observed that Order VII Rule 11 was inapplicable because the plaint did disclose a cause of action at the time of filing; thus, the inherent power under Section 151 was the only procedural remedy to remove a "dead" suit from the file

The Court criticized the Trial Court’s rationale of keeping the suit pending merely to sustain interim injunctions, citing Machado Brothers to affirm that interlocutory orders are aids to final orders and cannot justify the continuation of infructuous proceedings

The Court rejected the Respondent's argument regarding a pending amendment for lease renewal, noting that no such amendment had been sought for nearly a decade post-expiry and that the correctness of the impugned order must be judged based on the pleadings existing at the time of the Trial Court's decision

The Court held that when a suit's cause of action is extinguished by subsequent events, the court has a jurisdictional duty under Section 151 CPC to dismiss the litigation to prevent the abuse of the judicial process

Notice of Motion No. 3788 of 2016 was made absolute, and Civil Suit No. 6256 of 2005 was dismissed as infructuous

The Respondent's prayer for a stay on the judgment was rejected