( 1 ) * * * *

( 2 ) THE question is whether a party to a suit can be permitted to raise subsequently a plea which is incompatible or inconsistent with the plea taken up on the earlier occasion in the earlier pleadings. The very genesis of the law of pleadings is that the Court and the receptive parties should have full knowledge of the case of the both parties so that the subseq- uent trial may proceed in that well defined channel and no prejudice is caused to either of the sides by rambling and meandering course of trial. This very principle is laid-down in Order 8 Rule 9 of the Civil Procedure Code which reads as follows: rule 9. No pleading subsequent to the written statement of a defendant other than by way of defence to a set off shall be presented except by the leave of the Court and upon such terms as the Court thinks fit. . . . . This legislative mandate has been laid-down in an imperative langu- age which is too clear to call for any aid of cannons of construction and the purpose underlying is that the parties must know as to what is the case of the other side which it is called upon to meet.

( 3 ) THE same conclusion can be had also from the equally mandatory provisions of Order 6 Rule 7 of the Civil Procedure Code which read as under: rule 7: No pleading shall except by way of amendment raise any new ground of claim or contain any allegation of fact inconsistent with the previous pleadings of the party pleading the same. Order 6 of the Civil Procedure Code dea-ls generally with the pleadings of both the plaintiff and the defendant and the legislative mandate quoted above is applicable both to the plaint and to the written statement. It is therefore clear that what has been stated once as an allegation of fact or as a ground of a claim or an attack has got to be stuck to by the parties and any change in that stand can be taken note of by the Court only by way of amendment which is permissible only under the established principles of law.

( 4 ) MR. Shah the learned Advocate however contended that when- ever a plaint is amended by the plaintiff a right accrues to the defendant to file a written statement to the amended plaint and once this right accrues to the defendant what is stated expressly or impliedly by the defendant in the earlier written statement would not bar his right to take up whatever stand the said defendant likes irrespective of the stand taken by him in the earlier written statement. Taken to its logical limits Mr. Shahs plea would mean that even if the defendant has admitted specifi- cally or expressly anything in his earlier written statement from his personal knowledge it would be open to him in his second and subsequent written Statement to withdraw the same without seeking the amendment of the earlier written statement and take up even an incompatible stand. In other words Mr. Shahs submission would come to this that a defendant would have a right to obliterate his earlier written statement from the record - in fact the earlier statement remains on the record - if he so feels and it would not be open to the Court to have recourse to the earlier written statement to find out the stand taken therein in respect of a particular matter. In my view this is absolutely abhorrent of the con- cept of law of pleadings as envisaged in the Civil Procedure Code. In my view a defendant has got a right when he is permitted to file his written statement to the amended plaint to have his say only with respect to the matter introduced by amendment and no further. Order 8 Rule 9 of the Civil Procedure Code in its latter part no doubt confers discretion on the Court to require a written statement or additional written statement from any of the parties and fix a time for presenting the same. It is already implicit in such powers to that they are to be exercised ex debito justitiae. The Court exercising its discretionary powers does so only to advance the cause of justice and such a power assuming that it