Karnataka HC Lets Defendant Correct ‘Plaintiff’ Typo In Injunction Suit, Add Plea Plaintiff Must Seek Declaration And Possession

The petitioner, Defendant No. 2 in a suit for permanent injunction, sought amendment of the written statement under Order VI Rule 17 read with Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

He proposed correcting a Kannada word in paragraph 5—substituting “defendants” for “plaintiff”—and adding a plea that the plaintiff should seek declaration and possession.

The trial court dismissed the application on the ground that the amendment would withdraw an admission and prejudice the plaintiff.

The petitioner challenged that order before the High Court.

Order VI Rule 17 CPC governs amendment of pleadings; Section 151 CPC preserves the court’s inherent powers.

The judgment considered the principle concerning withdrawal of an admission in a written statement, noting that the trial court had relied on Ram Niranjan Kajaria v. Sheo Prakash Kajaria, (2015) 10 SCC 203.

The High Court did not set out a separate formulation of that precedent’s rule; it held that the proposed correction, assessed in the context of the pleading as a whole, was a typographical correction rather than a clear and unambiguous admission.

The written statement repeatedly asserted that the defendants had been in possession of the suit property since time immemorial.

Read against those repeated assertions and the final sentence of paragraph 5, the use of “plaintiff” in one sentence was an evident typographical error, not an admission capable of creating a right in the plaintiff or requiring a decree.

The further proposed plea about declaration and possession elaborated the existing objection to the maintainability of a bare injunction suit; it did not introduce an unrelated defence.

The trial court had relied on Ram Niranjan Kajaria without addressing these case-specific circumstances.

Defendant No. 2 was permitted to amend the written statement, and the trial court was directed to proceed in accordance with law.