Law: Civil Procedure Code (V of 1908)

Section: 14,1,2

(a) Civil Procedure Code (V of 1908)--- ----O. VII, R. 14. O. XIII, Rr. 1, 2 O. XVI---Summoning and attendance of witnesses---Embargo on summoning of witnesses---Witnesses called through process of court and witnesses voluntarily produced by the parties--- Distinction---Scope and purpose of O. XVI, C.P.C. Order XVI, C.P.C. regulated the summoning and attendance of witnesses in order to protect the interests of litigating parties. To this end, its Rule 1 put an embargo on the right of litigants to summon witnesses in support of their claims. This embargo provided that litigating parties shall submit in court a list of witnesses to be called for attendance within seven days following the framing of issues, and that they shall not be permitted to call any witnesses outside of this list, except with the permission of the court. The purpose of this embargo was to ensure that the litigating parties may prepare their cases with a measure of certainty and know the kind of evidence that was going to be produced, so that they may make necessary preparation for rebuttal and cross-examination and were not taken by any surprise at a belated stage in the proceedings. Muhammad Anwar Ali v. Ilyas Begum PLD 2013 SC 255 ref. None of these provisions of O. XVI, C.P.C. mention the category of witnesses that the litigants produce on their own motion. To the contrary, said provisions repeatedly refer to summoning of witnesses and the related matters, meaning thereby that the scope of O. XVI, C.P.C. did not go beyond summoning and attendance of witnesses through court. In this context, it stood to reason that the embargo under O. XVI, C.P.C. was also limited to the witnesses who were to be summoned through the court, and did not extend to the witnesses that the parties sought to produce voluntarily without invoking the summoning powers of the court. Voluntary production of witnesses by the parties did not jeopardize the purpose of O. XVI, C.P.C. because such witnesses either supported the claims made in the pleadings and/or the documents mentioned in the list annexed to the plaint under O. VII, R. 14, C.P.C. or produced in court at the first hearing of the suit, i.e. after the…

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/digixyei/sldsystempk.com/view/master-layout/view_case.php on line 492