Commercial suits rarely die of a single blow; they are more often bled by a thousand interlocutory cuts. In Reliance Industries Limited v. NTPC Limited, 2026 INSC 862, decided on 14 August 2026, a Bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe confronted a suit for specific performance filed in 2005 that is still at the stage of evidence. The judgment does two things of general importance: it enforces the finality of interlocutory orders against attempts to relitigate them through witness affidavits, and it demonstrates the Court’s growing willingness to make obstruction expensive.
A suit older than many of its lawyers’ careers
The dispute traces to a Letter of Intent dated 16 June 2004 for the supply of natural gas to NTPC’s power stations. NTPC’s case is that the seller’s acceptance concluded a contract for 132 trillion BTU over 17 years; the suit for specific performance followed in 2005. What occupied the courts for the next two decades, however, was not the merits but a running battle over documents.
Round one
The defendant sought discovery of the plaintiff’s internal documents. The High Court dismissed the attempt in 2014 as a fishing enquiry into material irrelevant to whether a contract was concluded.
Round two
The defendant then sought to bring its own internal documents on record alongside its witness affidavit. That too was dismissed in 2016 — internal deliberations could not decide the objective question of contract formation.
Round three
When witness affidavits nonetheless narrated the contents of such documents, the Supreme Court in 2019 held that rulings which had attained finality could not be circumvented by oral evidence, and remitted the redaction exercise to the High Court.
The present appeal
The High Court performed a paragraph-by-paragraph redaction of the affidavits. The defendant appealed again. The Supreme Court has now affirmed the redaction in full.
What the Court held
The Bench upheld the High Court’s careful line: portions of the affidavits reciting the contents of internal e-mails and correspondence already excluded from evidence were rightly struck out, while testimony recording the witness’s own perception and state of mind at the relevant time — what the witness understood, which meetings the witness attended — was rightly retained. The argument founded on the rule that oral evidence must be direct did not assist the appellant, because the vice lay not in directness but in using testimony as a vehicle for material the courts had finally shut out.
The principle is one of issue discipline: prior judicial orders that have attained finality bind the trial court and the parties. A party dissatisfied with an evidentiary ruling must challenge it then and there or live with it — not re-agitate it at the trial through drafting ingenuity.
The costs order and the message behind it
What gives the judgment its edge is the Court’s treatment of delay. Noting that the suit “filed by NTPC way back in 2005 has not progressed much” and that “at every stage there has been obstruction”, the Bench dismissed the appeal with costs of ₹10,00,000, payable to the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association within five weeks, and directed the High Court to conclude the trial expeditiously. A direction to complete the trial had already been issued in 2019; the Court made plain that its patience with interlocutory attrition is exhausted.
Takeaways for commercial suits in Delhi
Front-load evidentiary objections
Objections to discovery and admissibility should be raised comprehensively and early. Once decided and final, the ruling frames the trial; piecemeal re-agitation is now visibly penalised.
Draft affidavits within the ruling
Affidavits of evidence under Order XVIII CPC must respect prior exclusions. Narrating the substance of excluded documents invites redaction and undermines the witness’s credibility.
Costs are no longer notional
Courts increasingly use realistic costs — here ₹10 lakh — to price obstruction. Advising a client to pursue a delaying interlocutory appeal now requires weighing that exposure honestly.
For litigants before the Commercial Courts in Delhi and the Delhi High Court, the judgment is less about gas supply than about tempo. The Commercial Courts Act, 2015 was designed to compress exactly this kind of attrition; Reliance Industries v. NTPC shows the Supreme Court supplying the sanction that makes the design work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the underlying dispute between the parties?
NTPC sued in 2005 for specific performance, asserting that a concluded contract for the supply of 132 trillion BTU of natural gas over 17 years arose from a Letter of Intent of June 2004. Whether a concluded contract exists is the central issue at trial. The present appeal concerned only an evidentiary skirmish: how much of the defendant's witness affidavits could refer to internal documents already ruled inadmissible.
Can a party lead oral evidence about documents held inadmissible?
No. The Supreme Court held that once orders excluding certain internal documents attained finality, their contents could not be proved indirectly through oral testimony. A witness may still depose to facts within personal knowledge — that meetings occurred, or the witness's own contemporaneous understanding — but cannot narrate the contents of the excluded material.
What is the significance of the ₹10 lakh costs order?
The costs were imposed on the appellant for prolonging a suit that had made little progress in two decades, with the Court observing that there had been obstruction at every stage. The amount is payable to the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association within five weeks. It signals that interlocutory appeals pursued to delay trial now carry a real financial risk.
How does this affect commercial litigation strategy generally?
Interlocutory rulings on discovery and admissibility, once final, bind the trial court and the parties. Attempting to reopen them through drafting devices — affidavits, recast pleadings or oral evidence — invites redaction, costs, or both. The sound course is to challenge an adverse ruling promptly or accept it and shape the evidence within its bounds.