IMPORTANT POINT
Additional evidence, whether oral or documentary, is not to be admitted in Appellate Court unless a case for admission thereof is made out by reference to clause (a) or (aa) of sub-rule (1) of Rule 27 of Order 41 CPC or unless appellate Court requires such evidence to enable it to pronounce judgment or for any other substantial cause.

JUDGMENT

R.C. Lahoti, J.-Leave granted.

2. A suit for issuance of permanent preventive injunction was filed by the plaintiff-respondents against the defendant-appellants. The suit was decreed by the trial court. The decree has been maintained by the First Appellate Court as also by the High Court. Feeling aggrieved, the defendant-appellants have filed this appeal by special leave.

3. The only submission made by Shri V.R. Reddy, the learned senior counsel for the appellants, is that the First Appellate Court has committed a grave error of law in rejecting the application filed by the appellants under Rule 27 of Order XLI of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. It is submitted that if only the application would have been allowed, the additional evidence sought to be brought on record by the appellants would have made a material difference in the findings arrived at by the First Appellate Court and the rejection of the application has occasioned a failure of justice.

4. Before the First Appellate Court, the appellants sought to tender in evidence three documents which are certified copies of public records. The application was rejected by the Appellate Court forming an opinion that the application was a bald application not setting out any facts relevant to the exercise of jurisdiction by the Appellate Court by reference to any of the clauses (a), (aa) and (b) of sub-rule (1) of Rule 27 of Order XLI. The prayer was reiterated by the appellants in the High Court but it met with the same fate and for the same reasons.

5. Shri V.R. Reddy, the learned senior counsel for the appellants, has pressed for the admission of the same documents in additional evidence and for the consequent remand to the First Appellate Court. The prayer has been vehemently opposed on behalf of the respondents by their learned counsel, led by Shri Kapil Sibal, Senior Advocate. At one stage it was submitted on behalf of the respondents that the exercise sought to be indulged into by the appellants, would be one in futility inasmuch as the documents which the appellants are proposing to tender in evidence are already available on record. In view of this submission, an adjournment was sought for on behalf of the appellants. It appears that during the pendency of this special leave petition and between the two dates of hearing, the appellants moved the First Appellate Court seeking return of the documents which were filed by them in the First Appellate Court as accompanying the application under Order XLI, Rule 27 of CPC. The First Appellate Court returned the documents on 10.02.2004 and thereafter these documents have been brought to the notice of this Court by placing the same at the hearing. Shri Reddy, the learned senior counsel, has been at pains to demonstrate that the documents already available on record appear to be the similar certified copies but a minute comparative study of the documents reveals that the contents of the documents which the appellants were seeking to be brought on record were at variance with the documents available on record and, therefore, the admission of these documents in additional evidence was all the more necessary inasmuch as the Court shall have to hold which of the two documents carried reliability and that would obviously have a material bearing on the findings of fact to be arrived at.

6. Shri Kapil Sibal, the learned senior counsel for the respondents, has vehemently urged that Order XLI, Rule 27 of the CPC was an exception to the ordinary rule of admitting evidence in civil cases. Inasmuch as the exercise of discretion under Order XLI, Rule 27 of the CPC in favour of the party seeking such exercise, has the result of almost re-opening the trial which has otherwise stood concluded, care and caution is needed for exercise of such discretion and the power cannot be exercised just for asking. It was obligatory on the part of the appellants to have set out in the application such necessary facts as would lay foundation for the