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Axon Construction Pvt. Ltd. v. Om Astha Construction Pvt. Ltd. & Ors.

Special Leave Petition (Civil) · Neutral citation not assigned (Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 5430 of 2016)Decided 29 Feb 2016
Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 5430 of 2016
Justice J. Chelameswar · Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre

Background

Axon Construction, a defendant in a pending civil suit (Title Suit No. 789 of 2013) at Patna, had challenged an interim order of the trial court through a writ petition before the Patna High Court under Article 227 of the Constitution. The High Court declined to entertain the writ petition, holding that the order was separately appealable under Order 43 Rule 1 of the Civil Procedure Code and so could not be examined by way of writ. Axon then approached the Supreme Court by special leave, but at the hearing chose not to press the correctness of the High Court's view.

Decision Breakdown

Instead of deciding whether the High Court was right to refuse the writ petition, the Supreme Court recorded the petitioner's modified request: that the trial court (which still had pending before it an application under Section 8 of the Arbitration Act and an injunction application) simply be directed to decide those applications expeditiously, since no orders had been passed on them for a long time, causing hardship to all parties. Finding this request reasonable, the Court disposed of the special leave petition by directing the Sub-Judge, Patna to decide both pending applications on merits, in accordance with law, preferably within six weeks, uninfluenced by any observations in the order. This fully disposed of the SLP as actually pressed.

Lesson Learnt

A litigant stuck on a technical point (such as whether an order was wrongly challenged by writ instead of appeal) can sometimes get faster, more practical relief by asking the higher court simply to direct the lower court to decide the pending matter quickly, rather than fighting out the correctness of a procedural ruling.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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