Banking court can’t award unclaimed markup: SC

According to Dawn, the Supreme Court has held that lower banking courts lack power to grant markup which a lender never requested in its plaint. The apex court set aside a February 2019 Lahore High Court verdict that had permitted Citibank to collect markup via an amended decree. A three-member bench, led by Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, accepted the appeal.

The dispute traces back to Crescent Spinning Mills, which defaulted on financing taken from Citibank in the 1990s, prompting a Rs76m recovery suit filed in 1995. The 1999 decree in the bank's favour was later amended under Section 152 of the Civil Procedure Code to add markup until recovery. The court held that this provision cannot be used to change substantive rights or to rehear a case, and that errors should go through a review petition or appeal.

The judgement also noted that relief not sought in the plaint is treated as abandoned, and a general prayer for any other relief does not justify it unless the facts already on record support it. The petition was converted into an appeal, and both the high court ruling and the banking court order were overturned where they permitted markup via the revised decree.