The Prayer

You get only what you ask for.

The plaint is almost complete. The facts are there. The cause of action is there. The property has been carefully identified. The documents are ready. You have checked the forum, checked limitation. And now you arrive at the part that looks almost embarrassingly simple: the prayer. A few lines at the end. The client has already told you what he wants, so you might think — I’ll just write that down.

Don’t. This is where the entire case comes together, or quietly falls apart. The prayer is not a summary of the client’s wishes. It is the precise relief you are asking the court to grant, and there is a rule every young lawyer should learn early enough that it stops being a painful lesson and simply becomes instinct: you get what you ask for. As a matter of pleading discipline, you cannot expect a court to grant relief you never properly sought, merely because you thought it was implied somewhere in the story.

Go back to the client — the one whose brother entered his property. “Sir, I want my property back,” he tells you. “Anything else?” He thinks about it. “Yes. I don’t want him coming back.” Now you have two distinct objectives, not one: first, recover possession; second, prevent further interference. Those are not the same relief, and you have to identify them separately, each supported by its own material facts pleaded in the body of the plaint.

So start with a blank page, write the word PRAYER, and stop. Don’t begin typing immediately. Ask yourself what, exactly, you want this court to do — not what happened, you’ve dealt with that already; not who is morally wrong, that isn’t the legal question; not what punishment would make the client feel better, which is often not the legal question either. The only question that matters here is: what legally recognised relief am I asking this court to grant? That is where the map of remedies you have been building since the earlier lectures on remedy finally earns its keep.

A client says he wants a declaration. “Declaration of what?” “That I am the owner.” Good — now ask if there’s anything else the court needs to do. “The other side is occupying it.” Now be careful, because a bare declaration may not be enough on its own. Section 34 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 carries an important proviso: a person entitled to further relief beyond a mere declaration of title or right cannot omit to claim that further relief and still expect the declaration alone to solve the practical problem. So “declare that I am the owner” may not describe the complete remedy at all. Ask what practical problem will remain even after the declaration is granted — if the defendant is still in possession, perhaps possession has to be claimed too; if he is threatening further interference, perhaps an injunction is also necessary. The prayer has to solve the legal problem, not simply announce the client’s position and stop there.

Try reversing the usual order. Instead of writing the prayer last, write it first. Suppose the client wants a declaration of his legal right, and a permanent injunction against interference. Now work backwards: what facts earn the declaration? What facts earn the injunction? Look at the plaint — are those facts actually there? If not, you have found a drafting problem before filing rather than after, which is the entire value of this exercise. Every prayer needs a paragraph behind it. If your prayer asks the court to direct the defendant to execute and register a sale deed, show the factual foundation for it — where is the agreement, where is the contractual obligation, what did the plaintiff do, what was the defendant required to do, when was performance due, where is the refusal or failure pleaded. If those facts are missing, the prayer has appeared from nowhere, and that absence is a warning sign worth taking seriously before anyone else notices it.

Take a real plaint and go straight to the prayer, ignoring everything else for the moment. Write every relief out separately — declaration, permanent injunction, mandatory injunction, whatever the document actually asks for — and beside each one write: where is the fact that earns this? Find the paragraph, write its number down. If you cannot find one, mark it MISSING, and then ask whether the prayer is simply too broad — perhaps the pleading supports an injunction but not a declaration, or supports possession while the prayer only asks for a declaration, or asks for a mandatory injunction without ever pleading the circumstances that would justify one. This exercise teaches something reading commentary never quite manages to: a prayer can expose a defective plaint all on its own.

Now consider the opposite failure — excess. “Sir, put everything in,” the client says, and the temptation to obey is real. Declaration, possession, injunction, damages, specific performance, cancellation, interest, costs, any other relief, and then, almost reflexively, “and whatever else the Court thinks fit.” There may well be circumstances where alternative or consequential reliefs genuinely belong in the prayer. But “put everything in” is never a drafting strategy on its own. Ask which relief is actually available on these facts, which is actually necessary, and whether there are procedural consequences to claiming — or failing to claim — a particular relief now, rather than later.

That last question leads directly to Order II Rule 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, one of the more important provisions in this stretch of the series. A single cause of action can give rise to several possible claims, and the client may say, “I’ll take this one now, and come back for the other later.” The law does not necessarily treat the same cause of action as an unlimited reserve account to be drawn on whenever convenient — Order II Rule 2 embodies the principle that a plaintiff should include the whole of the claim arising from the cause of action, subject to the rule’s own conditions concerning reliefs that are omitted or relinquished, and the consequences that can follow for a later suit on the same cause of action. So before you leave something out of the prayer, ask honestly whether you are deliberately not claiming it, and what the actual consequence of that choice is — a very different question from casually telling a client, “we’ll claim that separately,” without first researching what “separately” is actually going to cost him.

Picture it concretely. A contractual dispute has arisen, the client wants the court to direct performance of the agreement, and there may also be a monetary claim arising from the very same facts. “Let’s leave the money part for later,” the client says, and you should not simply nod. Ask why. Is there a genuine strategic reason? Is the claim legally separate, or does it arise from the same cause of action? Does Order II Rule 2 make the omission risky? This is exactly the kind of question that separates litigation strategy from mere drafting mechanics.

There is another danger worth naming here — the prayer has to translate the client’s emotional language into the correct legal relief, not merely echo it back. A landlord says, “he has stopped paying rent, I want him out immediately,” and you cannot simply write “evict the defendant immediately.” First you determine the legal relationship, the law governing the tenancy, whether it has actually ended, what statutory grounds are available, which forum has jurisdiction, what notice is required, and what relief the court can actually grant. The prayer comes after that analysis, as its legal translation — never before it.

The prayer must also match the right defendant. Suppose the plaintiff wants a decree against A, but the document at the centre of the dispute is with B, or the person actually in possession is C. Ask who genuinely needs to be bound by the relief you are seeking — a question that eventually leads into joinder and necessary parties, but which the prayer itself can expose early. If you cannot clearly say against whom the court should grant the relief, stop. You may not yet have identified the proper parties at all, which makes the prayer a diagnostic instrument as much as a final page.

Sometimes the facts or the law genuinely justify more than one possible shape of relief, and a carefully drafted pleading may include alternative reliefs where that is appropriate. But there is a real difference between “I have considered the alternatives and pleaded them deliberately” and “I am not sure what I actually want, so I have asked for everything just in case.” The first is advocacy. The second is uncertainty dressed up as thoroughness, and your prayer should make it obvious which one you are practising.

Now attack your own prayer the way the other side eventually will. Forget that you drafted it. Read only the prayer and ask: what is the plaintiff trying to get from my client? Where is the factual basis for it? Is this relief actually legally available? Has the plaintiff asked for too much, or failed to ask for something necessary? Is any part of the claim vulnerable under Order II Rule 2? Does the relief correspond with the property description, and with the parties actually named? If you can attack your own prayer honestly, you are becoming dangerous in exactly the right way.

Remember, too, that a prayer is not evidence, not argument, not a legal essay. It should tell the court plainly what decree or order you are seeking. “The defendant has acted in a highly illegal, malicious, arbitrary and dishonest manner and therefore the plaintiff is entitled to justice” is not a prayer. “Pass a decree of permanent injunction restraining the defendant, his agents and persons acting through him from entering upon or interfering with the plaintiff’s possession of the suit property” is a prayer, because now the court knows exactly what it is being asked to do. Specificity is your friend, not an ornament.

You will often see a residual clause tacked on — “and pass such other order or relief as this Hon’ble Court may deem fit and proper.” Such a clause can be useful, but it is not licence for careless pleading. It does not mean, “I forgot something important, but perhaps the court will invent it for me.” The primary reliefs still have to be expressly and properly pleaded, and the rule worth remembering is blunt on purpose: if you want a relief, ask for it. Do not build a case on the hope that a general closing clause will rescue a claim you never actually made.

Try this as your next exercise. Take a new case, read the facts, and — before drafting the plaint — write only the prayer: a declaration of this, a permanent injunction restraining that, a mandatory injunction directing something else, costs, and such further relief as may be permissible. Put the prayer aside, draft the facts, and then return to it. For each item ask where the paragraph is that earns it — if you cannot find it, go back and fix the facts, not the prayer. Then ask whether there is a relief you actually need but haven’t asked for, and whether you have included one the facts don’t support. This exercise forces you to think about the case as a whole, rather than as a sequence of sections written in isolation from each other.

There is a final conversation worth having with the client before any of this reaches paper. “You told me you want your property back.” “Yes.” “And you want the defendant stopped from interfering.” “Yes.” “And there’s a disputed sale deed sitting in the middle of all this.” “Yes.” “Then I need to work out whether we need possession, a declaration, cancellation, an injunction, or some combination that the facts and the law actually support.” The client looks relieved. “So you know what to ask for?” And the honest answer is the only one worth giving: “That’s what I’m supposed to work out before I file your case” — not to reproduce his anger, not to reproduce his story, not to reproduce a previous plaint, but to choose the legal relief, and then build the pleading so the court has exactly the material facts it needs to grant it.

Your assignment, before the next lecture: take the plaint you’ve been working through and read only the prayer. List every relief. For each one, find the supporting paragraph and write its number beside it. Find one prayer that is inadequately supported, and explain why. Find one relief that appears to be missing, and research the reason rather than assume it should have been claimed. Check Order II Rule 2 against every claim arising from the same cause of action. Then rewrite the prayer, and compare your version with the original — not asking which sounds more sophisticated, but asking, honestly, if you were the judge, would you know exactly what decree you were being asked to pass. If the answer is yes, you are getting somewhere.

The plaint now has a destination. But a destination is not enough on its own — the court also needs to know who is actually standing behind the document, and what it is being asked to rely on. Many young lawyers reach the end of a plaint and think the difficult work is over. It isn’t. Verification, affidavit, the list of documents — these are often treated as the administrative tail of a pleading. They are not, and that is exactly where we slow down next, precisely where most young lawyers are tempted to speed up.

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