A party cannot introduce inconsistent pleas in pleading without court permission, upholding the integrity of legal pleadings.

Table of Content
1. a party cannot change previously made pleas without appropriate amendments. (Para 5 , 6)
2. court's discretion regarding amendments must adhere to statutory provisions. (Para 7 , 8 , 9)

1 to 4.  xxxx xxxx xxxx
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 respective parties should have full know of the case of both the parties so that the, subsequent 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 O. 8, R. 9 of the Civil P. C. which reads as follows: -
"R.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 language which is too clear to call for any aid of canons 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.

5. The same conclusion can be had also from the equally mandatory provisions of O. 6, R. 7 of the Civil Procedure Code which reads as under:
"R.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".
O.6 of the Civil P. C. deals 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.

6. Mr. Shah, the learned Advocate, however, contended that whenever 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. Shah's plea would mean that even if the defendant has admitted specifically or expressly anything in his earlier written statement from the 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. Shah's submission would come to this that a defendant would have a light 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 concept of law of pleadings as envisaged in the Civil P. C. 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. O.8, R.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 that the

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