JUDGMENT

1. CS (Comm) 2718/2021 was instituted by the petitioner Anita Chhabra, before the learned District Judge (Commercial Court) ("the learned Commercial Court") against the respondent Surender Kumar for recovery of Rs.66 lakhs along with interest, as a commercial suit under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (CPC) as amended by the Commercial Courts Act, 2015. As required by Order XI Rule 1(1)¹ of the CPC, as amended by the Commercial Courts Act, the petitioner filed, alongwith the plaint, on 27th July 2021, a list of the documents on which the petitioner proposed to place reliance, along with copies thereof.

2. Summons were issued in CS (Comm) 2718/2021, the petitioners filed an application under Order VII Rule 14 of the CPC on 8th September, 2021, seeking to place, on record, certain additional documents which, according to the application, were a "necessary and essential part of the suit", but could not be filed with the plaint "due to negligence on the part of the plaintiffs". It was further averred, in the application, that the documents were crucial to adjudicating the lis and that no prejudice would be caused to the respondent if the documents were permitted to be brought on record; whereas, the petitioners would, else, be subjected to serious prejudice. As the suit was still at the stage of issuance of summons, the application prayed that the documents be permitted to be brought on record.

3. I may note even at this juncture, that, an application by a plaintiff, to place on record additional documents in a commercial suit, is required to be filed under sub-rule (4)² (where the additional documents are filed within 30 days of filing of the plaint) or (5)³ (where the additional documents are filed more than 30 days after filing of the plaint), and not under Order VII Rule 14 of the CPC. In Sudhir Kumar @ S. Baliyan v. Vinay Kumar G.B., 2021 SCC OnLine 734, the Supreme Court held, however, that an application for placing additional documents on record in a commercial suit, even if filed under Order VII Rule 14 of the CPC, could be treated as an application under Order XI Rule 1(4) or (5) of the CPC. As such, the application filed by the petitioners is treated as an application under Order XI Rule 1(4) or (5) of the CPC.

4. The aforesaid application filed by the petitioners for taking additional documents on record was dismissed by the learned Commercial Court vide order dated 4th December 2021. An application, under Section 114 of the CPC, seeking review of the said decision was also dismissed by the learned Commercial Court vide order dated 8th April 2022. Both these orders are under challenge in the present petition preferred under Article 227 of the Constitution of India.

Impugned order dated 4th December 2021

5. The learned Commercial Court has, in the order dated 4th December 2021, dismissed the petitioners' application, observing that (i) the documents were not contained in the list of documents filed with the plaint, on which the petitioners sought to place reliance, (ii) the petitioners were not seeking to contend that the documents were not in their power and possession at the time when plaint was filed and (iii) the application did not provide any reasonable cause for default, on the part of the petitioners, in filing the said documents with the plaint. Rather, observes the learned Commercial Court, the petitioners had admitted, in their application, that the documents were not filed with the plaint owing to the petitioners' own negligence. In these circumstances, the learned Commercial Court held that no case for permitting the documents to be brought on record, within the meaning of Order XI Rule 1 of the CPC as amended by the Commercial Courts Act, existed. The application was, accordingly, dismissed with costs of Rs.5,000/-.

Order dated 8th April 2022

6. In the order dated 8th April 2022, the learned Commercial Court ruled, additionally, that the documents that the petitioners sought to bring on r