Question

Under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, where a suit is instituted against a person who is subsequently found to have been wrongly impleaded as a defendant, the court may:

• A. Dismiss the suit as not maintainable.
• B. Permit substitution or addition of the proper defendant.
• C. Direct the plaintiff to institute a fresh suit.
• D. Return the plaint on the ground of mis-joinder of parties.

Hint:

Order I Rule 10 CPC is known as the provision dealing with addition, deletion, and substitution of parties. Whenever a question involves a wrong defendant, think of Order I Rule 10.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Order I Rule 10 of the CPC is the provision written specifically to handle a wrongly impleaded party, so checking each option against what that rule actually authorises settles the question.

1. Dismissal, a fresh suit, or return of the plaint: each of these would end or restart the litigation over a curable defect in the identity of a party, which is precisely the outcome Order I Rule 10 is meant to avoid.
2. Substitution or addition of the proper defendant: Order I Rule 10 lets the court strike out, add, or substitute parties at any stage of the proceedings where necessary for a complete and effective decision on the real matters in dispute, which is exactly the corrective step called for when the wrong person has been made a defendant.

Since the Code's own provision for this precise problem is corrective rather than terminal, allowing substitution or addition of the correct defendant is the outcome the CPC actually provides for.

Answer 2

The four options split naturally into three that end or restart the case and one that simply fixes it, and lining them up against the CPC's underlying philosophy of curing defects rather than punishing genuine litigants makes the correct choice clear.

1. Dismissal and return of the plaint: both of these terminate the proceeding on essentially technical grounds relating to who was named as a party, even though the underlying claim may be entirely genuine, which is at odds with how the CPC generally treats curable procedural defects.
2. Direction to file a fresh suit: this option similarly discards the existing proceeding rather than correcting it, again treating a fixable error in party identity as if it were fatal to the entire case.
3. Substitution or addition of the proper defendant: this option, by contrast, matches how Order I Rule 10 actually operates, letting the court amend the array of parties within the same suit so that the real dispute can still be adjudicated on its merits, without penalising the plaintiff for an error in identifying the defendant.

Once the three case-ending options are recognised as inconsistent with the CPC's corrective approach to party mistakes, the option permitting substitution or addition of the proper defendant remains as the outcome the Code actually authorises.

Therefore, the correct answer is permit substitution or addition of the proper defendant.