Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
Section 92 excludes oral evidence of any agreement or statement offered, as between the parties to a document or their representatives in interest, for the purpose of contradicting, varying, adding to or subtracting from the terms of the document, once those terms have been proved by primary or secondary evidence. The whole difficulty in applying it is knowing what counts as a term.
Consideration is the classic battleground. A conveyance recites a price; a party wants to show the price was really different. Is that contradicting a term, or is it proving a fact about the transaction? Bai Hira Devi answers it, and the answer governs a large family of exam problems about sale deeds and promissory notes.
Facts
The rule was applied where the amount appearing due on a promissory note was sought to be contradicted by showing that the promisee had agreed that it need not be paid. The court followed Bai Hira Devi, in which the position had been laid down for a conveyance.
Held
In the case of a conveyance, it is not open to either party to the document to prove that, if the consideration was mentioned as ten thousand rupees, the consideration was in fact less or more. Consideration is a term of the contract, and so within the exclusion.
Reasoning
Step one — the bar operates only after the terms are proved. Section 92 comes into play when the terms of the contract, grant or disposition have been proved in accordance with the preceding section. The two sections supplement each other: one prescribes how the terms are to be proved, the other prevents them being unmade by word of mouth.
Step two — the bar is between the parties only. No oral evidence may be given by the parties to the document or their representatives in interest to qualify its terms. Other persons are left free to give such evidence; that is the effect of the proviso now found in BSA s. 102 (IEA s. 99), under which persons who are not parties may prove a varying agreement.
Step three — consideration is a term, so an alleged difference in amount is excluded. The distinction which survives was drawn by the Madras High Court in K.S. Narasimhachari v. Indo Commercial Bank: a party may give evidence under the first proviso to show that the document was invalid because there was no consideration, or the consideration failed, or the consideration was of a different kind from that mentioned — but he may not prove a variation of the consideration recited in the document. Absence, failure and difference in kind go to validity; a different figure goes to the terms.
Step four — the provisos. The exclusion is subject to the six provisos, which an answer should list: facts invalidating the document, such as fraud, intimidation, illegality, want of due execution, want of capacity, want or failure of consideration, or mistake of fact or law; separate oral agreements on matters on which the document is silent, subject to conditions; and, at the far end, evidence showing in what manner the language of the document is related to existing facts.
Exam use
The reliable structure is: prove the terms under BSA s. 94 (IEA s. 91); apply the bar in BSA s. 95 (IEA s. 92); then test the party's story against the provisos.
Use Bai Hira Devi the moment a problem has a party trying to prove that the price or the amount was different from what the instrument recites. It disposes of that attempt, and it disposes of the common argument that consideration is merely a recital rather than a term.
Keep the validity/variation line clear: a plea of no consideration at all or the consideration wholly failed is admissible under the first proviso; a plea of the real price was different is not.