An amendment of the plaint that adds a relief for possession due to dispossession during the pendency of the suit does not result in a change of cause of action and can be allowed, provided there is no mala fide intent and the delay in making the amendment application does not result in injustice to the other party.

1. This is a defendants revision petition against an order of the learned Senior Subordinate Judge, Mandi allowing an amendment of the plaint.

2. The plaintiff filed a suit for declaration that he was in joint ownership and possession of certain parcels of land and was entitled to claim partition thereof. The defendant contested the suit and alleged that the suit was incompetent as the plaintiff was out of possession on the date of the institution of the suit and, therefore, a declaratory relief alone was not competent. Sometime later the plaintiff applied for amendment of the plaint alleging that he had been dispossessed during the pendency of the suit and claimed permission to amend the plaint so as to include a relief for possession also. The defendant took two grounds against the amendment application. One was that if the amendment was allowed it would result in changing the cause of action. The other ground was that the amendment application had been moved mala fide.

3. The amendment application has been allowed by the learned Senior Subordinate Judge by his order dated May 15, 1975, and the defendant now applies in revision.

4. The first contention of Shri Inder Singh, on behalf of the petitioner, is that the consequence of permitting an amendment of the plaint will be to displace the original cause of action by an altogether new one, that where the suit was originally based on the pleading that the respondent was in possession it will now proceed on the allegation that he is out of possession. In support of this submission learned counsel relies on Govinda v. Perumdevi, (1889) ILR 12 Mad 136 (137). There the suit had been originally brought for a mere declaration of title on the footing that the plaintiff was a reversioner. Subsequent to the institution of the suit, the defendant No. 1 died and the plaintiff now claimed a declaration of title as owner of the property consequent upon such death. The Madras High Court held that the original suit had now become a suit for possession by reason of the reversion having become an estate vested in possession and therefore, the amendment substantially altered the original cause of action. It is true that they also observed that the amendment rested on an event which did not occur until after the suit had been instituted, but the observation taken in the context in which it was made arose out of the circumstance that the original cause of action had been entirely replaced by a different one. Whereas the suit was brought originally on the basis that the plaintiff was a reversioner, it now rested on the basis that he had become owner of the property. In the present case, having pleaded that he was in possession all that the plaintiff could do was to pray for a declaration of his title to the property and nothing more. If, as he alleges, he was disposed from the property during the pendency of the suit, it became necessary for him to pray for possession also. There was no change essentially in the cause of action. The basis of the suit remained throughout the title of the plaintiff. The additional relief for possession in the suit was a relief following upon the declaration of his title, and not in substitution of it. It was necessitated because he had been dispossessed from the property during the pendency of the suit. Reliance is also placed by learned counsel for the petitioner on Damar Mahaton v. Jagdip Mahton, AIR 1936 Pat 535, but in that case the Patna High Court merely followed Govinda (supra).

5. A case in point is Maruti v. Ranganath, AIR 1955 Hyd 1 (FB). A Full Bench of the Hyderabad High Court laid down that the original cause of action had not altered and that (was) what was claimed by way of amendment, even though it related to an event which occurred after the institution of the suit, directly flowed from the original relief claimed in the suit. In my opinion, it is one thing to say that an event happening after the institution of the suit results in substantially di