The plaintiff, who is the revision petitioner, aggrieved by the order passed by the Court below in allowing the fourth defendant to file the counter claim under Order VIII Rule 9 of the Code of Civil Procedure, has filed the above revision.

2. For the sake of convenience, the parties are referred to hereunder according to their litigative status and ranking in the suit.

3. The suit is filed for partition. The fourth defendant is the brother of the plaintiff. According to the fourth defendant, one item of property in Schedule A and the property mentioned under Schedule C, in the partition deed dated 23.05.1990 were partitioned and given exclusively to the fourth defendant. Hence, he has made a counter claim with respect to that portion of the property. The said application was allowed by Court below, which is now under challenge in this revision by the plaintiff.

4. The learned counsel appearing for the revision petitioner/plaintiff, contended that the written statement was filed by the R6/fourth defendant in the month of June 2012. However, the counter claim under Order VIII Rule 6A of the Code of Civil Procedure [in short, ‘CPC’] has been filed belatedly on 05.12.2013, that to