Supreme Court: Plaintiffs in commercial suits must answer a counter-claim within 30 days, extendable to 120 at most

The Court said the issue turns on the interpretation of Order VIII CPC. A counter-claim, introduced by the 1976 amendment through Rule 6A, is on par with a plaint, and the plaintiff's reply is nothing other than his written statement. Rule 6A(3) lets the court fix the time for that reply, Rule 6E allows judgment against a plaintiff who defaults, and Rule 6G applies the rules on a defendant's written statement to such a reply. The time limit for a defendant has been tightened over the years. The proviso to Rule 1, as substituted for commercial suits by Section 16 of the Commercial Courts Act and its Schedule, allows a defendant 30 days and, for reasons recorded and on costs, up to 120 days, after which the right to file is forfeited. This was affirmed in SCG Contracts (India) Private Limited v. K.S. Chamankar Infrastructure Private Limited. Rule 10 and its proviso stress that no court may extend the time beyond that limit.

The Court noted that some High Courts had taken a liberal view. The Rajasthan High Court (Nirottam Sharma) held that the trial court must fix a time under Rule 6A(3). The Madras High Court (CSCO LLC v. Lakshmi Saraswathi Spintex) condoned a 563-day delay, reasoning that no time had been fixed and that SCG Contracts did not apply, and also held that the clock starts only when the court fixes a time, and that the bar in the proviso to Rule 10 mentions Rule 1 but not Rule 9, so a written statement to a counter-claim could be extended. The Bombay High Court (Dattaram Pednekar, following Shalini Nunes Mascarenhas) held that Rule 6G concerns only the contents of a written statement. The Delhi High Court's Indcon Boiler decision turned on its own facts. The Court disagreed with the Bombay view, saying the phrasing of Rule 6G admits no such restriction, and it held that the Madras view would leave a plaintiff free to devise his own time schedule if the court failed to fix one. That could not be the intention of the statute, which in commercial suits seeks speedy disposal, and tighter time lines are consistent with that object. A reply to a counter-claim is also not a 'subsequent pleading' needing leave under Rule 9, which excepts a defence to a set-off or counter-claim.

Read together, the scheme is that the court may first fix a time under Rule 6A(3). That time may be extended on the plaintiff's application under the proviso to Rule 1 read with Rule 6G, up to a maximum of 120 days from service of summons or receipt of the counter-claim, or by the court itself under Rule 9, where the time it fixes is shorter, just 30 days, within the same outer limit. The Court answered the question in the affirmative. The plaintiffs' application came after 238 days, far beyond the outer limit of 120 days.

On maintainability, the Court reviewed Section 13 of the Commercial Courts Act. The proviso to Section 13(1A) allows an appeal only from orders enumerated in Order XLIII CPC and Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, and Section 13(2) says that no appeal shall lie otherwise than in accordance with the Act. Relying on BGS SGS SOMA JV v. NHPC Limited, a three-Judge Bench decision that an appeal is a creature of statute, and Kandla Export Corporation v. OCI Corporation, it held that an order under Order VIII is not appealable under Order XLIII, so the Division Bench was right that the appeal was not even maintainable.

The Judge and the Division Bench were fully justified in rejecting the plea for leave despite the long delay. The appeals were dismissed, the interim order of 23 May 2025 was vacated, pending applications were dismissed and the parties bear their own costs.