The Doctrine, Its Consequences, and the Duty of the Court to Refuse Relief on the Combined Grounds of Forum Shopping, Absence of Clean Hands, and Suppression of Material Facts
I. Introduction
Forum shopping is not a technical irregularity to be waved away as sharp practice by an over-zealous litigant. It is, in the considered and repeated expression of the Supreme Court of India, an abuse of the process of the court that corrodes the credibility of the justice-delivery system, wastes judicial time that belongs to genuine litigants, and rewards the unscrupulous over the deserving.
This article gathers, and independently verifies, the leading pronouncements of the Supreme Court condemning forum shopping, examines their functional overlap with the doctrine of clean hands and the duty of candid disclosure, and sets out — with precedent in support of each proposition — what a court seized of such conduct ought to do: reject the plaint, dismiss the suit or petition, and, where warranted, impose exemplary costs.
II. What Forum Shopping Is: The Functional Test
The Supreme Court in Union of India & Ors. v. Cipla Ltd. & Ors. undertook the most exhaustive judicial treatment of the concept, and its formulation remains the operative test applied by courts across India:
“A classic example of forum shopping is when a litigant approaches one Court for relief but does not get the desired relief and then approaches another Court for the same relief.”
— Union of India v. Cipla Ltd., (2017) 5 SCC 262
The Court in Cipla went further and catalogued additional recognised categories of the vice, including a litigant taking advantage of a divergence of view between two High Courts on the same question, and approaching different courts simultaneously or successively for the same relief through subterfuge.
The common thread across every category is functional: the litigant is not seeking adjudication on the merits at all, but is manipulating the architecture of concurrent or successive jurisdiction to manufacture an outcome the law would not otherwise yield.
III. “Crushed with a Heavy Hand” — Chetak Construction
The foundational rebuke remains Chetak Construction Ltd. v. Om Prakash & Ors., where the Supreme Court, dealing with an irregular order that facilitated bench manipulation, laid down what has since become the most frequently cited sentence in this branch of law:
“We certainly cannot approve of any attempt on the part of any litigant to go ‘forum-shopping’. A litigant cannot be permitted ‘choice’ of the ‘forum’ and every attempt at ‘forum-shopping’ must be crushed with a heavy hand.”
— Chetak Construction Ltd. v. Om Prakash & Ors., (1998) 4 SCC 577
This formulation has been reproduced verbatim by the Supreme Court itself in later decisions, including Jagmohan Bahl v. State (NCT of Delhi), 2014 SCC OnLine SC 1024, and has been consistently applied by High Courts across the country to strike down orders and pleadings tainted by forum manipulation.
IV. Forum Shopping as an Independent Ground to Refuse Relief — The Bail Jurisprudence
The principle is not confined to civil litigation. In State of Maharashtra v. Pankaj Jagshi Gangar, the accused withdrew a bail application pending before a Single Judge and then invoked the writ jurisdiction of a Division Bench, ostensibly to challenge the vires of the special statute, in order to secure interim bail he could not otherwise obtain. The Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s order in unambiguous terms:
“The aforesaid can be said to be forum shopping by the accused which is highly deprecated and which cannot be approved. On this ground also, the accused is not entitled to be released on bail and the impugned order passed by the High Court releasing the accused on bail deserves to be quashed and set aside.”
— State of Maharashtra v. Pankaj Jagshi Gangar, (2022) 2 SCC 66
The significance of Pankaj Jagshi Gangar for civil and writ practitioners is structural: the Supreme Court treated forum shopping not as a subsidiary observation in passing, but as an independent and sufficient ground, standing on its own, to set aside the relief granted below — irrespective of whatever merits might otherwise have existed.
V. The Cost of Habitual Forum Shopping — Pandurang Vithal Kevne
Where forum shopping is compounded by repetition over years, the Supreme Court has not hesitated to impose exemplary costs in addition to dismissal. In Pandurang Vithal Kevne v. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. & Anr., dealing with a petitioner who had pursued more than a decade of repetitive administrative and judicial remedies against a single, well-reasoned dismissal from service, the Court observed:
“When litigants … engage in forum shopping, file repetitive and meritless pleas, and deliberately delay proceedings, they erode the very foundation of our legal system … It is also the duty of the Courts at different levels to curb such type of litigation so that more time is available for dealing with genuine litigation.”
— Pandurang Vithal Kevne v. BSNL & Anr., 2024 INSC 1051
The Special Leave Petition was dismissed with costs of ₹1,00,000, the Court expressly holding that the right of access to courts, though a cornerstone of the constitutional order, is not absolute and must be exercised responsibly.
VI. The Doctrine of Clean Hands and Suppression of Material Facts
Forum shopping rarely travels alone. It is, in the ordinary course of litigation, accompanied — and frequently enabled — by suppression of the fact that an earlier suit, petition, or application on the same cause is pending or has already been decided. Indian law treats this second vice with equal severity under the independent doctrine of clean hands. The governing authority is Dalip Singh v. State of U.P. & Ors., where the Supreme Court, lamenting what it called the decay of ethical values in litigation, held:
“In last 40 years, a new creed of litigants has cropped up. Those who belong to this creed do not have any respect for truth. They shamelessly resort to falsehood and unrighteous means for achieving their goals … the fact remains that a good number of unscrupulous litigants are prevailing upon the courts …”
— Dalip Singh v. State of U.P. & Ors., (2010) 2 SCC 114
The Court in Dalip Singh dismissed the appeal at the threshold for fabrication and suppression of facts, and imposed exemplary costs, holding in terms that a litigant who does not approach the court with clean hands is not entitled to be heard on the merits at all. The same principle, applied specifically to writ jurisdiction under Articles 32 and 226, was affirmed in Prestige Lights Ltd. v. State Bank of India, which held that a petitioner invoking the extraordinary, equitable, and discretionary jurisdiction of a constitutional court is duty-bound to place every material fact before the court — including, self-evidently, the pendency or disposal of an earlier proceeding on the same cause — and that failure to do so justifies dismissal at the threshold without any inquiry into the merits.
A closely allied formulation appears in K.D. Sharma v. Steel Authority of India Ltd. & Ors., which held that a litigant cannot be permitted to play “hide and seek” with the court or to adopt a strategy of “pick and choose” in disclosure, and that suppression of a material fact is impermissible even as a technique of advocacy.
And the oldest of the line, S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu v. Jagannath, remains the classical statement that a judgment or order obtained by withholding a material document from the court is a nullity and that the party responsible deserves to be thrown out of the litigation at any stage — a proposition of particular force where a plaint conceals the existence of an earlier suit between the same parties on the same cause.
VII. Where the Two Doctrines Converge: The Combined Ground for Dismissal
The practical significance for a court — and for counsel resisting a forum-shopped plaint — lies precisely in the convergence of these two lines of authority. A plaint that (a) is filed after an earlier suit, petition, or application on the same or substantially the same cause has failed to yield the desired relief, and (b) suppresses the existence of that earlier proceeding, presents not one but two independent and mutually reinforcing grounds for dismissal at the threshold:
First Ground: Abuse of Process Through Forum Shopping
First, on the functional test in Cipla and the heavy-hand principle in Chetak Construction, the very act of approaching a second forum for the same relief after failing before the first is itself an abuse of process, sufficient standing alone (per Pankaj Jagshi Gangar) to defeat the relief sought.
Second Ground: Abuse of Process Through Suppression
Second, on the clean-hands doctrine in Dalip Singh, Prestige Lights, and K.D. Sharma, the suppression of the earlier proceeding is an independent abuse of process that forfeits the litigant’s right to be heard on the merits at all, irrespective of the underlying strength of the cause of action.
Independent and Alternative Grounds for Dismissal
Where both features are present — as they typically are in a deliberately forum-shopped plaint — the correct judicial course is not merely to weigh the two together but to record findings on each independently, so that the order of dismissal rests on two self-sufficient pillars and is correspondingly more resistant to challenge in appeal or revision.
VIII. What the Court Should Do
Drawing the above authorities together, the following course of action is warranted where a court, at any stage — including at the threshold, on an application under Order VII Rule 11 CPC, or under the court’s inherent power — finds that a plaint or petition is tainted by forum shopping and suppression of the pendency or outcome of an earlier proceeding:
1. Reject the Pleading or Dismiss the Proceeding at the Threshold
- Reject the plaint or dismiss the suit/petition at the threshold. Where the abuse is apparent on the face of the pleadings — for instance, a suit filed after an identical suit has been withdrawn, dismissed, or is pending elsewhere on the same cause — the court need not await trial; per K.K. Modi v. K.N. Modi, the inherent power to strike out a pleading as frivolous, vexatious, or an abuse of process may be exercised summarily.
2. Record a Specific Finding of Forum Shopping
- Record a specific finding of forum shopping, identifying the earlier forum approached, the relief sought there, the outcome (or non-disposal), and the temporal and substantive identity between the two proceedings — following the functional test laid down in Cipla.
3. Record an Independent Finding on Suppression
- Record a separate and independent finding on suppression of material facts, identifying precisely what was withheld and why it was material, applying the clean-hands standard in Dalip Singh and Prestige Lights, so that the order does not rest on forum shopping alone.
4. Decline to Examine the Merits After the Threshold Findings
- Decline to examine the merits of the suppressed or forum-shopped claim once the threshold findings above are recorded — per Dalip Singh and K.D. Sharma, a litigant who does not come with clean hands is not entitled to be heard on the merits at all, and a merits inquiry at that stage risks legitimising the abuse.
5. Impose Exemplary Costs Where Warranted
- Impose exemplary costs commensurate with the abuse, particularly where the conduct is habitual or spans multiple forums or years — following the ₹1,00,000 costs order in Pandurang Vithal Kevne and the costs imposed in Dalip Singh.
6. Address Interim Orders Obtained Through Suppression
- Where the suppression was accompanied by an interim order obtained ex parte on incomplete disclosure, vacate that order forthwith and consider whether the conduct also warrants reference for contempt, consistent with the observation in K.D. Sharma that suppression before a writ court may attract proceedings for abuse of process.
7. Record Both Grounds Independently
- Direct that the order of dismissal record both grounds — forum shopping and suppression — as independent and alternative bases, so that an appellate court affirming on one ground need not disturb the finding on the other.
IX. Conclusion
The Supreme Court’s language across four decades on this question has been unusually direct for judicial prose — forum shopping is to be “crushed with a heavy hand”; it “has no sanction in law”; it “erodes the very foundation of our legal system.” Read alongside the equally emphatic line of authority on clean hands and suppression, the message to trial and writ courts is unambiguous: a litigant who manufactures a second bite at a forum that has already refused, or is likely to refuse, relief — and who conceals that history from the second court — is not a party whose cause need be examined on its merits. The plaint or petition may, and ordinarily should, be rejected or dismissed at the threshold, with costs, on the combined and independently sufficient grounds of forum shopping and want of clean hands.
X. Citation Table
| Case | Citation / Case Details | Date of Judgment |
|---|---|---|
| Chetak Construction Ltd. v. Om Prakash & Ors. | (1998) 4 SCC 577 / AIR 1998 SC 1855 | 20-04-1998 |
| K.K. Modi v. K.N. Modi & Ors. | (1998) 3 SCC 573; Civil Appeal No. 613/1998 | 04-02-1998 |
| Union of India & Ors. v. Cipla Ltd. & Ors. | (2017) 5 SCC 262 / MANU/SC/1345/2016 | 21-10-2016 |
| State of Maharashtra v. Pankaj Jagshi Gangar | (2022) 2 SCC 66 / 2021 SCC OnLine SC 1172 | 03-12-2021 |
| Pandurang Vithal Kevne v. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. & Anr. | 2024 INSC 1051 / SLP (C) Diary No. 56230/2024 | 20-12-2024 |
| Dalip Singh v. State of U.P. & Ors. | (2010) 2 SCC 114; Civil Appeal No. 5239/2002 | 03-12-2009 |
| Prestige Lights Ltd. v. State Bank of India | (2007) 8 SCC 449 | 20-08-2007 |
| K.D. Sharma v. Steel Authority of India Ltd. & Ors. | (2008) 12 SCC 481 | 09-07-2008 |
| S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu v. Jagannath | AIR 1994 SC 853 / (1994) 1 SCC 1; Core holding: fraud vitiates judicial acts; a party withholding a material document is liable to be thrown out. | 27-10-1993 |
Written By: Inder Chand Jain
Ph no: 8279945021, Email: [email protected]
