Reliance Industries Limited v. NTPC Limited, 2026 INSC 862 (14 August 2026)
What the case was about
This appeal raised a practical question that affects how commercial trials are run: once a court has definitively excluded certain internal documents from evidence, can a party get around that ruling by having a witness describe those same documents in an examination-in-chief affidavit? The underlying dispute is a long-running battle between Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and NTPC Limited over a proposed natural gas supply arrangement stretching back to 2004. After earlier litigation, the Supreme Court held in 2019 that parties cannot adduce oral evidence about the contents of internal documents already held irrelevant and excluded. In August 2024, the Bombay High Court applied that ruling by redacting portions of two affidavits filed by RIL’s witness, Mr. B.K. Ganguly. RIL challenged those redactions, but the Supreme Court held that final orders on admissibility are binding and cannot be circumvented simply by recasting excluded material as oral testimony (para 20). The judgment also clarified that while a witness cannot smuggle in barred documents through the back door, they may still depose about their own state of mind and personal understanding of communications already on the evidentiary record, so long as such testimony is not an indirect vehicle for excluded material.
The key facts
NTPC invited bids for the supply of natural gas to its power plants. RIL submitted a proposal and accepted a Letter of Intent dated 16 June 2004, subject to the finalisation of a Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement. When the deal soured, NTPC filed a suit in 2005/2006 for specific performance of a contract to supply 132 trillion BTU of natural gas over 17 years. During the prolonged trial, RIL filed the first and second evidence affidavits of its witness, Mr. B.K. Ganguly. Earlier orders dated 20 February 2014 and 29 January 2016 had held certain categories of internal documents to be irrelevant and created a bar against their admission. In February 2019, the Supreme Court reinforced that bar, ruling that oral evidence regarding the contents of those excluded documents was inadmissible. Acting on that mandate, the Bombay High Court, by its order dated 22 August 2024 in Commercial Suit No. 189 of 2021, redacted portions of Ganguly’s two examination-in-chief affidavits that referred to internal emails, inter-se notings, and other excluded material. RIL then filed the present appeal.
The questions before the Court
The Supreme Court considered three principal issues:
- Whether the Bombay High Court erred in redacting certain portions of the first and second evidence affidavits of DW-1 Mr. B.K. Ganguly.
- Whether the appellant could rely on Section 60 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, to lead oral evidence about internal documents previously held irrelevant and excluded from the record.
- Whether the High Court’s exercise of redacting the affidavits was in conformity with the Supreme Court’s earlier judgment dated 28 February 2019.
What the Court decided and why
The Court dismissed RIL’s appeal with costs.
On the first issue, the Supreme Court found that the High Court had committed no error in understanding the 2019 directions or in applying them to the two affidavits (para 19). The High Court was fully justified in redacting portions that constituted indirect attempts to bring in the contents of internal emails and inter-se notings already excluded from evidence. The Court reiterated the core principle that it was not open to permit oral evidence with respect to the contents of documents barred by the earlier orders dated 20 February 2014 and 29 January 2016 (para 13).
On the second issue, the Court firmly rejected the argument that Section 60 of the Evidence Act could be used to reopen the matter. It held that the 2019 judgment had conclusively decided that parties cannot circumvent final orders on admissibility by adducing oral evidence of the same excluded documents. The Court observed it was “neither in a position to revisit the judgment and order passed by this Court on 28th February, 2019, nor inclined to do so,” and concluded that the High Court was fully justified in arriving at its conclusions (para 20).
On the third issue, the Court drew a careful and deliberate distinction. It affirmed that a witness may depose about their own state of mind and their perception of inter-party correspondence already on the record, provided the testimony does not indirectly introduce the contents of excluded documents. The High Court had retained some portions of the affidavits on this basis, and the Supreme Court agreed this approach properly balanced the 2019 mandate against the need to allow legitimate witness testimony.
Finally, noting that the underlying suit had already consumed the better part of two decades, the Court directed the Bombay High Court to take up and dispose of the commercial suit as expeditiously as possible. The appeal was dismissed with costs quantified at ₹10 lakhs, payable by RIL to the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association within five weeks (para 23).
Why it matters
The ruling strengthens the finality of interlocutory decisions on evidence. It shuts down a potential tactic whereby a party, unable to get documents admitted, simply has a witness narrate their contents in an affidavit. At the same time, the judgment preserves the legitimate scope of witness testimony: deponents remain free to describe their own perceptions and mental state regarding admitted communications, so long as they do not use that platform to revive barred material.
The decision also sends a strong signal about judicial delay in commercial litigation. By imposing a substantial cost order and directing the High Court to dispose of the suit without further delay, the Supreme Court made clear that parties cannot treat procedural rulings as waystations in a strategy of attrition. For litigants and trial judges alike, the judgment offers a workable template: scrutinise affidavit testimony carefully, redact the backdoor references, but let the witness speak to what they personally perceived.