The Delhi High Court has referred to a larger bench the question of whether courts retain discretion to accept written statements filed beyond the mandatory 120-day deadline under Order VIII Rule 1 of the Civil Procedure Code. The conflict arises from divergent single-judge rulings — some holding the deadline is absolute, others allowing judicial discretion. The larger bench's ruling will settle whether the CPC's commercial-suit reforms bind all civil courts equally and how strictly procedural bars can be enforced.

Order VIII Rule 1 of the CPC, as amended by the Commercial Courts Act 2015, mandates that a defendant file a written statement within 30 days, extendable up to 120 days. Beyond 120 days, the right to file a written statement is forfeited — this was designed to fast-track commercial disputes and prevent tactical delay. The Supreme Court in Desh Raj v. Balkishan (2020) and SCG Contracts v. K.S. Chamankar (2019) had already held this deadline to be mandatory and non-extendable for commercial courts. The tension before the Delhi HC arises because some civil suits — not strictly 'commercial disputes' under the Act — are handled by the same courts, and single judges have disagreed on whether the 120-day bar applies with equal rigidity there. This implicates a fundamental civil procedure principle: is the court's inherent power under Section 151 CPC or its general discretion strong enough to override an explicit statutory time-limit? The larger bench must reconcile the strict statutory language with the court's equitable jurisdiction. For CLAT PG aspirants, this tests the intersection of Order VIII Rule 1, the Commercial Courts Act, and the Supreme Court's repeated position that procedural timelines in commercial litigation are non-negotiable — a principle the examiner has tested through passage-based MCQs requiring application of CPC rules to new fact patterns.