( 1 ) THE plaintiff has filed a suit for recovery of Rs. 14,70,095. 00. The plaintiff is a company incorporated and registered under the Companies Act, 1956. The suit has been instituted by Shri K. V. Soorianarayanan, who is the Vice-President (Corporate) and Company Secretary of the plaintiff Company in pursuance to the board resolution in his favour. Mr. K. V. Soorianarayanan has also appeared in the witness box as PW-1.

( 2 ) THE defendant is a corporation incorporated under the Mines and Minerals trading Corporation Act. The defendant inter alia carried on business as a canalising agent for imports in terms of the Import and Export Policy of the country. The plaintiff claims that it was engaged in the manufacture of asbestos Cement Products with the use of Raw Asbestos which was mainly imported from other countries. Raw Asbestos was at all relevant periods one of the designated canalised items for import by the defendant. Thus all manufactures of asbestos products used to source their raw asbestos from the defendant being the sole canalising agent.

( 3 ) IT is the case of the plaintiff that in order to find out the likely requirement of raw asbestos fo