Shakeel Qureshi & Ors. vs. Rashid Qureshi & Ors.
Background
Family members holding shares in a closely-held food company (split into a "Rehber Group" and "Non-Rehber Group") sued to stop a chain of share transfers they said breached a 2022 shareholders' MoU requiring unanimous consent before any share transfer. The defendants argued the suit couldn't be heard in Delhi because the same MoU had a clause giving exclusive jurisdiction to courts in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh.
Decision Breakdown
The Court held that since the plaintiffs' own claims were entirely built on the MoU, the MoU's exclusionary jurisdiction clause (Clause 10, conferring jurisdiction only on Bareilly courts) had to be examined and applied. It rejected the plaintiffs' "approbate and reprobate" argument (that defendants couldn't rely on the MoU in other suits yet deny Delhi's jurisdiction here), finding the defendants' conduct in earlier, differently-framed suits didn't amount to such inconsistency. The plaint was returned under Order VII Rule 10 CPC to be filed before a court of competent jurisdiction at Bareilly, without any opinion expressed on the merits of the fraud/breach allegations.
Lesson Learnt
If a contract that your claims are legally dependent on contains an exclusive-jurisdiction clause, courts will enforce that clause and send you to the specified forum, even if some part of the dispute also touches the place where you sued.