Section 152 CPC cannot be invoked to add new properties or alter substantive rights.

The petitioner filed a suit for declaration concerning his alleged ownership and possession of land comprised in Khewat No.132/112, Village Gwalior, Gurugram.

The respondent filed an admitted written statement.

The parties thereafter appeared before the Daily Lok Adalat and entered into a compromise, pursuant to which an award dated 16.01.2018 was passed directing transfer of the specified property in favour of the petitioner, subject to the Registration Act.

After approximately six years, the petitioner filed an application under Order VI Rule 17 read with Section 151 CPC to add two further parcels of land, comprised in Khewat Nos.320/252 and 322/254, to the plaint, and a connected application under Sections 152 and 151 CPC seeking corresponding amendment of the award.

The Trial Court dismissed both applications, holding that the proposed additions were not clerical or typographical corrections but sought to introduce new property and alter the substance of the adjudication.

The petitioner challenged that order in the present civil revision petition.

The Court applied Order VI Rule 17 CPC, which permits amendment of pleadings where necessary for determining the real controversy, subject to the limitation that an amendment cannot be used to introduce a fundamentally new claim or cause prejudice after adjudication.

Sections 151 and 152 CPC preserve the Court’s inherent powers and permit correction of clerical or arithmetical mistakes, or accidental slips or omissions, in judgments, decrees and orders; however, Section 152 cannot be invoked to alter the merits, enlarge the subject matter, or vary substantive rights after the Court has become functus officio.

The Court distinguished Peethani Suryanarayana v. Repaka Venkata Ramana Kishore, 2009 (2) R.C.R. (Civil) 521, where the amendment merely corrected an incorrectly typed survey number without changing the identity of the property.

The Court relied on Dwaraka Dass v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 1999 INSC 53, for the principle that Section 152 CPC is confined to ministerial correction of accidental or clerical errors and cannot be used to pass an effective substantive order or correct an omission going to the merits.

The Court also considered that the original award was expressly subject to the Registration Act.

The Court held that the proposed additions were not comparable to the survey-number correction permitted in Peethani Suryanarayana.

The two additional parcels were absent from the original plaint, the original compromise, the evidence, and the award; hence, their omission could not be characterised as a mere typographical or clerical error.

The petitioner’s reliance on a later Jamabandi for 2014–15 did not establish that the properties had formed part of the original dispute.

Further, the proposed properties were recorded jointly in the names of M/s Tropicals Parks Limited and other persons who were not parties to the suit, raising concerns regarding third-party rights.

The applications were filed more than six years after the award, despite the petitioner’s assertion that mutation had already been sanctioned on its basis; the petitioner also failed to place the relevant mutation and subsequent Jamabandies on record.

In these circumstances, allowing the applications would have enlarged the subject matter of the suit and modified substantive rights through Section 152 CPC, which was impermissible.

The Court additionally observed that the original transaction appeared insufficiently supported because the plaint disclosed no sale deed, date of purchase, payment details or other clear basis for the alleged transfer, and that a registered transfer deed could be executed upon payment of the requisite stamp duty and registration charges.

It held that the proposed incorporation of the two additional parcels was a substantive enlargement of the suit and award, not correction of an accidental, clerical or typographical mistake.

The Trial Court was therefore justified in dismissing the applications under Order VI Rule 17, Sections 151 and 152 CPC.

The civil revision petition was dismissed, and all pending applications were ordered to stand closed.