The main legal point established in the judgment is the significance of written contracts as the final agreement between parties, the limitations on admitting evidence of terms once a contract is reduced to writing, and the impact of statutory provisions on the admissibility and legal effect of documents.

Sadasiva Aiyar, J.

1. The defendant is the appellant, the plaintiffs having obtained a decree in the lower courts for the specific performance of an alleged contract made by the defendant in favour of the plaintiffs to grant a lease of the plaint lands for a term of 12 years.

2. I do not think that the plaint relies upon any oral agreement to give a lease of the plaint lands, independent of the "letter" (agreeing to give such a lease) which was executed by the defend-ant. The written statement while admitting the genuineness of the letter, expressly states that the letter is legally ineffective for want of registration.

3. Ordinarily, when the terms of a contract preceded by proposals, negotiations, conditional acceptances, counter proposals and so on, are reduced finally to the form of a document, signed by one or both of the parties, the strong presumption is, not that there are two independent contracts, (the first an oral contract and the second, the written contract), but that the written con-tract is the only final contract between the parties, Ridgway v. Wharton. (1856-7) 6 H.L.C. 238 & 264 As West, J. puts it in Burjorji Cursetji Panthaki v. Muncherji (1880) I.L.R. 5 B. 143. 149 " when the parties have agreed to commit their oral agreement to writing, a presumption was raised by the Roman Law and is raised by the Prussian Codes and other modern laws, that the right or obligation is dependent on an execution of the instrument ; " there is a presumption which reason at once recognises, of the merely tentative character of an oral declaration, meant to be superseded by a written one." When a contract is once re-duced to writing, no other evidence can be given of its terms (Section 91 of the Evidence Act).

4. There may be rare cases in which the contract was completed some time before the creation of evidence of it in writing was thought desirable by the parties and it is an arguable point whether that contract of the prior date may not be proved as an independent contract creating rights and liabilities, though the writing of the later date is legally inadmissible in evidence or incapable of creating any rights or liabilities and whether such writing cannot be used as evidence of the prior contract, though not as itself creating rights.

5. In Rajh of Venkatagiri v. Narayana Reddi (1894) I.L.R. 17 M. 456 a contract to lease was completed on 24th October 1889, the defendant having finally agreed on that date to execute a lease of the plaint lands to the plaintiff. (It appears from the report that a written

6. Darkhast application and an order on that application had completed the contract on 24tb October 1889). The plaintiff executed a kabuliat to the defendant on 30th November 1889, that is, more than a month after the completion of the contract. The question was whether the Kabuliat of 30th November executed by the plaintiff can be admitted in evidence of the prior agreement of 24th October 1889. It was held that it was so admissible. All the other observations in the judgments of the Full Bench in that case tending to lay down wider propositions of law than the narrow one above mentioned have been explained away in the Full Bench decision in Narayana Chetty v. Muthiah Servai (1910) I.L.R. 35. M. 63 s. c. 21 M.L.J. 44 and by my learned brother Napier, J. (Mr. Justice Ayling concurring) in the very recent case in Morgan and Sons v. Fernandez (1916) 30 M.L.J. 519.

7. But in this case, as I understand the pleadings, no prior independent oral agreement is set up in the plaint or is admitted in the written statement.

8. As regards admissions in pleadings, if the plaint relies on a document and mentions its contents but does not disclose that through want of proper stamp, through non-registration, through non-compliance with a statutory provision relating to attestation or through other similar defects, the writing is inadmissible in evidence and if the defendant does not set up in his defence that the document is so inadmissib