It is a essential ingredient of a contract, that there must be a offer and its acceptnce. If there is no offer, there is no contact, because there is no meeting of minds. Again, if there is an offer by one party, but it is not accepted by the other party or if the ostensible acceptance of the offer is defective, then also, there is no agreement and therefore no “contract”.

These propositions may appear to be elementary. A large bulk of commercial litigation, however, requires the parties to deal with the basic questions, which are :

(a) Whether there has there been an offer at all in the particular case, or whether there is something less than an offer;

(b) If there is an acceptance; whether it is in the proper form;

(c) Whether there has been an acceptance of the offer;

(d) Whether the acceptance has been communicated to the offeror.