A written agreement to sell a horse names the price as "one lakh rupees or one lakh fifty thousand rupees." No later fact, no witness, no surrounding circumstance can tell a court which figure the parties actually settled on — the uncertainty is baked into the sentence itself. Section 96 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) deals with exactly this kind of failure, and its answer is the opposite of every section covered so far in this run: no evidence is admitted at all.
96. Exclusion of evidence to explain or amend ambiguous document.
When the language used in a document is, on its face, ambiguous or defective, evidence may not be given of facts which would show its meaning or supply its defects.
Illustrations.
(a) A agrees, in writing, to sell a horse to B for "one lakh rupees or one lakh fifty thousand rupees". Evidence cannot be given to show which price was to be given.
(b) A deed contains blanks. Evidence cannot be given of facts which would show how they were meant to be filled.
Section 96 reproduces Section 93 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 without any wording change — confirmed against two independent bare-act sources, both illustrations intact.
Patent Ambiguity: A Different Category of Problem
This chapter's remaining sections — 97 through 100 — all deal with what evidence lawyers call latent ambiguity: language that looks clear on its own but turns doubtful only once it is applied to the real world, whether because it matches nothing (Section 98), matches too much (Section 99), or matches two things partially (Section 100). Section 96 covers something categorically different: patent ambiguity, doubt that is visible on the face of the document itself, before any external fact is even considered. "One lakh rupees or one lakh fifty thousand rupees" is not clear language that becomes doubtful in context — it is doubtful on the page.
That distinction explains why the rule flips so completely. Where latent ambiguity is at stake, evidence has something concrete to work with — an actual house at Howrah, an actual second white horse, an actual second parcel of land. The evidence resolves a genuine competition between real candidates. A patent ambiguity like an "or" price clause offers no such anchor: there is nothing in the world for evidence to point to that would tell a court which figure was the true one, because the document's own words never committed to either.
Why the Blanks Illustration Matters as Much as the Price Illustration
The second illustration — a deed with unfilled blanks — extends the same logic to an even more literal defect. A document that leaves spaces empty where a name, date, or figure should be has not created two competing readings; it has created no reading at all for that portion. Filling those blanks based on outside evidence would not be interpreting the document — it would be writing new content into it, which is precisely what this chapter's exclusionary rules exist to prevent a court from doing on a party's say-so.
| Illustration | Nature of the Defect | Why Evidence Cannot Fix It |
|---|---|---|
| (a) "One lakh or one lakh fifty thousand" | Two stated alternatives, no chosen one | The document itself never committed to either figure |
| (b) A deed with blanks | Missing content entirely | There is no language at all for evidence to explain |
The Contract Law Consequence: Void for Uncertainty
Section 96's evidentiary bar has a direct partner in substantive contract law. Section 29 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 provides that agreements whose meaning is not certain, or capable of being made certain, are void. A price clause offering two alternative figures with no mechanism to choose between them is the textbook example of exactly this defect — and Section 96 is what stops a party from trying to rescue such an agreement through oral evidence about which figure was "really" agreed, since the agreement is void for uncertainty regardless of what any witness might now claim to recall.
Key Takeaways
- Section 96 BSA carries forward Section 93 IEA verbatim, both illustrations intact — confirmed against two independent sources.
- It governs patent ambiguity — doubt visible on the face of a document — as distinct from Sections 97 to 100's coverage of latent ambiguity, which only emerges once the words meet real facts.
- No evidence is admissible to resolve a patent ambiguity, because the document never committed to a single meaning in the first place — there is nothing concrete for evidence to point back to.
- The rule reinforces Section 29 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872: an agreement whose meaning cannot be made certain is void, and evidentiary tricks cannot rescue it.
- An "or" clause or genuine drafting gap is only barred where the document itself gives no mechanism to resolve it — a document that supplies its own election or condition is not a Section 96 problem.
Conclusion
Some drafting failures cannot be repaired after the fact, no matter how much evidence a party is willing to bring. Section 96 draws that line clearly: where a document is doubtful on its own face, with no candidate meaning fixed anywhere in its words, evidence is shut out entirely, and the defect is left to substantive contract law — usually voidness for uncertainty — to resolve. Anyone drafting a document with alternative figures, conditional terms, or incomplete fields should treat this section as a warning: the gap has to be closed on the page, because no witness will be permitted to close it later.