Can Order XIV Rule 2(2) be invoked to reorder a trial once the court has embarked upon the trial of the issues generally?

Paragraph 32Further, the legislative history relied upon in Prithvi Raj does not require a different conclusion either. Avoidance of remands explains why Parliament altered the ordinary rule in 1976; it cannot erase the very exception which Parliament simultaneously retained. The Law Commission itself expressly preserved cases where the Court lacked jurisdiction, or the suit was barred by law. The possibility of remand may, therefore, inform the exercise of the discretion conferred by the word ‘may’; it cannot supply an additional statutory condition that the other issues must remain unframed. We accordingly approve Prithvi Raj insofar as it holds that, once the issues have been taken up for trial together, the Court cannot thereafter sever one of them for prior adjudication. We are unable, however, to approve its wider proposition that Rule 2(2) is available only where the qualifying issue alone was framed at the outset and settlement of all other issues was postponed. Clarification of Sathyanath v Sarojamani

Paragraph 47The present case illustrates the distinction at the heart of Order XIV Rule 2. The framing of all issues does not, by itself, prevent the Court from directing prior trial of a qualifying issue under sub-rule (2). But once the Court has embarked upon the trial of the issues generally, that power can no longer be invoked to reorder a trial already underway. Here, the Plaintiff had completed his evidence, and the Defendants had entered upon theirs. Issue No. 5 was, therefore, not an issue awaiting a decision whether it should be ‘tried first’; it was already part of a composite trial in progress. Order XIV Rule 2(2) could not be employed at that stage to convert what was already being tried together into a preliminary adjudication of one issue alone.