Commercial trials are won and lost in the discipline of evidence, and few judgments illustrate that discipline as sharply as the Supreme Court decision of 14 August 2026 in Reliance Industries Ltd. v. NTPC Ltd., 2026 INSC 862. The Court upheld the redaction of portions of a witness affidavit through which a party sought to place before the trial court the substance of internal documents that had already, in earlier rounds, been held irrelevant and refused admission. The message for every litigant in a document-heavy suit is direct: what has been excluded as a document cannot re-enter as testimony.
A suit that became a case study
The underlying suit is one of the long-running commercial actions of the Delhi-Bombay corporate docket. NTPC issued a Request for Qualification for the supply of natural gas; Reliance Industries submitted its proposal and received a Letter of Intent on 16 June 2004, which it accepted subject to finalisation of a Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement. When performance did not follow, NTPC instituted a suit in 2006 seeking a declaration that a concluded and binding contract existed for the supply of 132 trillion BTU of natural gas over seventeen years, and specific performance of it.
The interlocutory history matters more than the merits for present purposes. In earlier rounds, internal communications of the defendant — board notes, internal e-mails, records of internal meetings — were held irrelevant to the question whether a concluded contract existed between the parties, and were refused admission into evidence. Those orders attained finality. When the defendant then filed affidavits of examination-in-chief of its witness, portions of the affidavits narrated the substance of those very documents and discussions.
The question and the answer
The plaintiff sought redaction; the High Court redacted; and the Supreme Court — Justices Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Alok Aradhe, in Reliance Industries Ltd. v. NTPC Ltd., 2026 INSC 862, arising from SLP (C) No. 23417 of 2024 — affirmed. The Court held that previous orders on relevance and admissibility, having attained finality, are binding on the trial court, and a party "cannot be permitted to adduce oral evidence qua said documents" once precluded from proving the documents themselves. To hold otherwise would allow every ruling on admissibility to be defeated by paraphrase.
The judgment is equally instructive for what it preserved. The redaction was surgical, not wholesale. The witness remained free to depose to three categories: his own perceptions and state of mind at the relevant time; the fact that discussions took place, as distinct from the contents of excluded records of them; and correspondence exchanged between the parties which was already admissibly on the record. The line the Court drew is the classical one — between a witness speaking to what he himself perceived, and a witness becoming a conduit for the contents of documents the court has shut out.
What was excluded
Passages conveying the contents of internal e-mails, notes and meeting records already held irrelevant and refused admission in earlier, final orders.
What survived
Testimony of the witness about his own perceptions, the fact of discussions, and inter-party correspondence already admitted on the record.
The consequence
Appeal dismissed with costs of ₹10 lakh, payable to the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association within five weeks, with a direction for expeditious trial.
Affidavit evidence and its discipline
In commercial suits, examination-in-chief is led by affidavit. That efficiency carries a temptation: the affidavit is drafted by lawyers, at leisure, and can be built to carry material that a witness in the box would never be permitted to narrate. This judgment restores the symmetry — the affidavit is subject to exactly the rules of relevance and admissibility that would govern oral testimony, and it can be policed by redaction before cross-examination begins. Objections to such affidavits are not procedural quibbles; they protect the integrity of rulings already made.
The second discipline the judgment enforces is finality. Interlocutory orders on evidence, once carried up and settled, bind the trial court. A litigant who believes a category of documents was wrongly excluded must fight that battle when it is decided — not re-open it obliquely at the affidavit stage years later. The costs order, and the pointed observation of the Court that a 2006 suit remains at the evidence stage after two decades, signal how such conduct is now received.
A closing word
For businesses in litigation, the case is a reminder that evidence strategy deserves the same rigour as pleadings: decide early which documents matter, prove them properly, and accept that rulings against admission close the door. For those preparing affidavits of evidence, every paragraph should answer one question — could this witness say this, admissibly, from the box? If the answer is no, the paragraph does not belong in the affidavit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the dispute about?
NTPC invited bids for the supply of natural gas and issued a Letter of Intent to Reliance Industries in June 2004. When the parties fell out over whether a concluded, binding contract existed, NTPC sued in 2006 for a declaration and specific performance. The suit — still at the stage of evidence two decades later — produced repeated interlocutory battles over whether internal RIL documents could come on record.
What exactly did the Supreme Court decide?
That the High Court was right to redact passages of the defendant witness's affidavits of examination-in-chief which conveyed the contents of internal communications already held irrelevant and inadmissible in earlier, final orders. A party precluded from proving documents cannot lead oral evidence of their contents. Testimony about the witness's own perceptions and state of mind, and about correspondence between the parties already on record, was allowed to remain.
Why were costs imposed?
The Court dismissed the appeal with costs of ten lakh rupees, payable within five weeks, reflecting its concern that interlocutory litigation of this kind had kept a 2006 suit at the evidence stage for two decades. It also directed that the trial be concluded expeditiously.
What is the practical lesson for commercial litigants?
Evidence affidavits are not an opportunity to relitigate settled interlocutory rulings. Orders on relevance and admissibility that attain finality bind the trial court and the parties at every later stage, and attempts to work around them — by paraphrase, summary or reference — invite redaction and costs. The time to fight about a document is when its admissibility is decided.