ORDER

O.A. 9/2023 & I.A. 1836/2023 (Stay)

1. The present Chamber Appeal has been preferred assailing an order passed by the Joint Registrar dated 06 January 2023 taking off the record the written statement which had been filed by the Appellant/Defendant No. 1. The appeal rests principally on the ground that Defendant No. 1 had not been served in accordance with Order V of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908 [the Code] and that the Joint Registrar has taken a hypertechnical view disregarding the fact that the proceedings related to a non-commercial suit. It was also urged that the view as taken by the Joint Registrar is contrary to the decisions delivered by the Supreme Court in Bharat Kalra v. Raj Kishan Chabra, 2022 SCC OnLine SC 613 and Kailash v. Nanhku, (2005) 4 SCC 480. The submission essentially was that the reasoning accorded is not only contrary to the decisions aforenoted but also to the decision of the Supreme Court in Desh Raj v. Balkishan, (2020) 2 SCC 708 which had, despite the peremptory language employed in Order VIII Rule 1 of the Code, taken the position that the discretion as vested in a Court to condone the delay that may have occurred in filing of a written statement