Plaint read as a whole: barred reliefs do not justify rejecting the entire suit when a civil tenancy dispute survives.

A plaint must be read as a whole under Order VII Rule 11 CPC, and rejection of the entire plaint is not justified merely because some reliefs may be barred by the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950. The bar under Sections 50, 51 and 80 can affect only those specific reliefs that require action under that Act, but it cannot defeat a plaint where the central dispute concerns tenancy, term of tenancy, and period of tenancy, matters within civil court jurisdiction. If a surviving civil cause of action is disclosed, the plaint cannot be rejected in part or in whole on account of additional untenable prayers.

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Issues: Whether the plaint was liable to rejection under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 on the ground that the suit, as framed, was barred by Sections 50, 51 and 80 of the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 and did not disclose a cause of action.

Analysis: The plaint had to be read as a whole, and the Court distinguished between the material facts constituting the cause of action and the reliefs claimed on those facts. The bar under the Bombay Public Trusts Act could affect only those reliefs which required action under Sections 50 and 51, but it could not destroy the entire plaint where the central dispute concerned tenancy, term of tenancy, and period of tenancy, matters falling within civil court jurisdiction. Order VII Rule 11 does not permit rejection of only a portion of the plaint, and the existence of some barred or untenable reliefs does not justify rejection of the entire plaint if a surviving civil cause of action is disclosed.

Conclusion: The plaint was not liable to be rejected in its entirety under Order VII Rule 11; the rejection orders were set aside insofar as they extinguished the tenancy dispute, while the plaintiffs were required to relinquish the non-maintainable reliefs.

Ratio Decidendi: A plaint must be assessed on a meaningful reading as a whole, and where the principal cause of action is within civil jurisdiction, the presence of additional reliefs barred by special statute does not warrant rejection of the entire plaint under Order VII Rule 11.

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