Revocation of suit withdrawal before formal court order may be entertained under inherent powers to prevent injustice.

Before a court formally records a plaintiff's abandonment of a suit, a request to revoke that withdrawal may be entertained under Section 151 CPC where necessary to prevent injustice. Order XXIII Rule 1 allows withdrawal, but the filing of a withdrawal application does not make abandonment final until the court passes a formal order and gives effect to it. The court may therefore consider revocation where fraud, mistake, misrepresentation, or a bona fide change of intention is shown. Here, the revocation application had to be decided with the withdrawal application, and the orders treating the suit as finally withdrawn were unsustainable.

---

---

Issues: Whether a plaintiff who has moved to withdraw a suit can revoke that intention before the court passes a formal order, and whether the court can entertain such revocation under its inherent powers.

Analysis: Order XXIII Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure permits a plaintiff to abandon a suit, but the abandonment does not become immune from judicial scrutiny merely on the filing of the withdrawal application where no formal order has yet been passed. The provision allows the court to regulate the consequence of withdrawal and does not exclude the exercise of inherent powers under Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure where the situation calls for correction of fraud, mistake, misrepresentation, or a bona fide change of intention before final termination of proceedings. A unilateral abandonment has serious consequences, and until the court formally records and acts upon it, the litigant's request to revoke the withdrawal cannot be rejected as incompetent. On the facts, the withdrawal application was followed by an application to revoke it, and the courts below failed to consider both together in the light of the governing principles.

Conclusion: The revocation application was maintainable and the courts below erred in treating the withdrawal as final without first deciding the competing applications together. The orders dismissing the suit as withdrawn could not be sustained.

Ratio Decidendi: Before a court formally records and gives effect to a plaintiff's abandonment of a suit, an application to revoke that withdrawal may be entertained under Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure where necessary to prevent injustice and to decide the matter in accordance with Order XXIII Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

---