Two friends agree, in writing, that one will accompany the other "to Ramgarh." Nothing else in the document says which Ramgarh — and India has several towns by that name, including one in Rajasthan and one in Uttarakhand, hundreds of kilometres apart. The document is not defective; it simply names a place that, on its own, could mean either of two real destinations. Section 99 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) — using this exact example — tells a court how to find out which one was meant.
99. Evidence as to application of language which can apply to one only of several persons.
When the facts are such that the language used might have been meant to apply to any one, and could not have been meant to apply to more than one, of several persons or things, evidence may be given of facts which show which of those persons or things it was intended to apply to.
Illustrations.
(a) A agrees to sell to B, for one thousand rupees, "my white horse". A has two white horses. Evidence may be given of facts which show which of them was meant.
(b) A agrees to accompany B to Ramgarh. Evidence may be given of facts showing whether Ramgarh in Rajasthan or Ramgarh in Uttarakhand was meant.
Section 99 reproduces Section 96 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 without any wording change — confirmed against two independent bare-act sources, both illustrations intact.
Equivocation: A Name for This Specific Kind of Doubt
Older evidence-law commentary calls this exact problem "equivocation" — language that is not vague or defective in itself, but that happens to fit two or more real candidates equally well. The classic textbook illustration, long used to explain this doctrine, involves a testator's will leaving property to "my nephew John," where the testator has two nephews both named John. The will's words are perfectly grammatical and perfectly clear as language; the difficulty is entirely external to the document, arising only because the world happens to contain two people the description fits.
Section 99 exists because a rule that simply voided any document containing an equivocal description would throw out contracts and dispositions over a problem that is usually easy to resolve once a court looks at the surrounding facts — which horse the buyer actually inspected, which nephew the testator was close to, which Ramgarh the two friends had been planning to visit.
What Makes This Different From an Unresolvable Ambiguity
Section 99's own wording contains a built-in limit: the language must be such that it "could not have been meant to apply to more than one" of the candidates. That is the difference between a genuine equivocation, which Section 99 resolves, and a description too vague to ever be pinned to a single referent, which no amount of evidence can fix. If A owned three white horses and the document simply said "my horse" without narrowing the field at all, the difficulty shifts from "which one of two candidates" to "an open-ended description with no natural stopping point" — a harder problem this section does not promise to solve on its own.
| Scenario | Governed By | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "My white horse" — A owns exactly two white horses | Section 99 BSA | Clean equivocation between two identifiable candidates |
| "My land at X in the occupation of Y" — no parcel matches fully | Section 100 BSA (next article in this series) | A split description, not a choice between two full matches |
| "My horse" — A owns an unspecified, larger number of horses | Neither section resolves it cleanly | The description does not narrow the field to a workable set of candidates |
A Contemporary Version: Two Companies, One Name
The same doctrine plays out routinely in commercial disputes involving common company names. A supply agreement refers simply to "Shree Enterprises" as the buyer, without an address or registration number. Two unrelated firms named Shree Enterprises exist in the same city. Section 99 lets the seller bring in evidence of which Shree Enterprises actually placed the order, received the goods, and issued the purchase order — invoices, delivery challans, correspondence, and the address goods were shipped to would all be facts "showing which of those persons or things it was intended to apply to," exactly as the section contemplates.
Key Takeaways
- Section 99 BSA carries forward Section 96 IEA unchanged, both illustrations intact — confirmed against two independent sources.
- It resolves "equivocation" — language that fits exactly one of several real candidates, but does not by itself say which one.
- The rule is deliberately narrow: it applies only where the description could not have meant more than one candidate, not to open-ended descriptions with no natural limit.
- Evidence admitted under this section identifies an already-intended referent; it does not vary or contradict the document's actual terms.
- The same doctrine resolves modern equivalents of the horse-and-Ramgarh problem — identical company names, duplicate addresses, common personal names in contracts and wills alike.
Conclusion
A description does not need to be unique in the world to be enforceable — it only needs to be resolvable once the surrounding facts are examined. Section 99 gives courts exactly that tool: a narrow, evidence-based way to match an equivocal description to the one candidate it was actually written for, without ever letting a party use "ambiguity" as a backdoor to rewrite what the document plainly says. The next article in this series turns to Section 100, which handles the harder cousin of this same problem — a description that fits neither candidate in full.