ORDER :

1. The petitioners herein are the defendants 2 to 6 in a suit for delivery of possession of an immovable property and mense profits. The present revision is against the rejection of the petitioners' application in I.A. No. 11903 of 2018 filed under Order 8, Rule 9 of the Civil Procedure Code to permit the second defendant to file an additional written statement in the suit.

2. Heard Mr. Vineet Subramani, learned counsel for the petitioners as well as Mr. S. Raghunathan, learned counsel for the respondent.

3. Mr. Vineet Subramani, learned counsel for the petitioners submitted that the petitioners 2 to 5 herein are the legal representatives of the first defendant. Earlier, the defendants 1 and 2 had filed written statement on 11.09.2007. When the suit was originally presented before the High Court in C.S. No. 248 of 2004, the same came to be transferred in 2010 to the City Civil Court, Chennai and re-numbered as O.S. No. 13825 of 2010. Subsequently, when the original defendants were set ex-parte and the suit was decreed on 31.10.2011, the defendants had filed an application to set aside the ex-parte order and when the same was dismissed as not maintainable, the High Court, by an order in CRP 587 of 2017, had allowed the revision with a direction to the trial Court to take the application to set aside the ex-parte order and decide the same on merits. The challenge to the order passed in the CRP No. 587 of 2017 before the Hon'ble Supreme Court also came to be dismissed on 20.03.2017. Thereafter, the legal representatives of the first defendant came to be impleaded on 01.08.2017. It is the submission of the learned counsel for the petitioners that meanwhile, the respondent herein had raised a technical objection stating that the orders of the High Court as well as the Hon'ble Supreme Court was only as against the order passed in the pre-numbering stage of the application to set aside the ex-parte decree and therefore, the issue as to whether the ex-parte decree to be set aside is to be agitated separately. The City Civil Court had accepted such a plea and the original orders setting aside the ex-parte decree came to be set aside. Thereafter, the said applications were taken up again and after arguments, the same came to be allowed on 24.08.2018. It is in this background that the petitioners had filed an application in I.A. No. 11903 of 2018 on 17.09.2018 under Order 8, Rule 9 of the Civil Procedure Code seeking permission for filing of an additional written statement. According to the learned counsel for the petitioners, the plaintiff's company had failed to show that Mr. A. Ramesh Prasad was authorized by them at the time of filing of the suit in the year 2004 and since the records available on the website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs reveals that Mr. A. Ramesh Prasad was appointed as Director only on 11.02.1999, the averments in the plaint that he was the Managing Director of the plaintiff's company in the year 1994 was false. As such, in order to incorporate this aspect, filing of an additional written statement in order to place the extract from the website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs along with the necessary certificate under section 65(B) of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 was imperative and therefore, the application seeking leave of the Court to file an additional written statement came to be filed. The learned counsel submits that the trial Court had erroneously rejected the application on the ground that the application under Order 8, Rule 9 of the Civil Procedure Code came to be filed at a belated stage. According to him, such an additional written statement can be filed at any point of time during the course of the proceedings with the leave of the Court. The learned counsel also further tried to impress this Court that the plaintiff was not a Managing Director of the plaintiff's Company in the year 1994 contrary to the averments in the plaint and submitted that the delay was not wholly due to the pe