Delay Is Not Defeat: SC Reasserts Substance over Timelines in Decrees for Specific Performance

In this case the Supreme Court has once again cautioned courts against allowing procedural rigidity to defeat substantive justice in suits for specific performance.

Setting aside the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s refusal to permit execution of a decree on the ground of delay, the Court reaffirmed that minor lapses in complying with timelines fixed in a decree do not, by themselves, extinguish a litigant’s substantive rights particularly where readiness and willingness to perform the contract stands judicially established.

What's The Matter?

The dispute arose from an agreement to sell executed in December 2004 for a property in Panchkula.

The trial court decreed the suit for specific performance in 2011, directing execution of the sale deed upon payment of the balance consideration within two months.

After a brief detour in first appeal, the decree for specific performance was restored by the High Court in second appeal in February 2016.

Execution proceedings followed, but not within the exact two-month period stipulated in the decree. The decree-holder deposited the balance amount in instalments over the following months.

This delay proved decisive for the High Court, which accepted the judgment-debtor’s objections and declared the decree inexecutable.

According to the High Court, failure to deposit the balance consideration within the time fixed by the trial court and absence of a formal application seeking extension rendered the decree unenforceable.

The executing court, it held, had no power to treat the filing of an execution petition as an implied extension of time.

What Court Said?

The Court rejected this approach as legally unsustainable and excessively technical. The judgment places central reliance on Section 28 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963, which expressly empowers courts to extend time for payment even after a decree for specific performance has been passed.

The Court reiterated that such power is intended to prevent forfeiture of substantive contractual rights on account of procedural defaults, unless the conduct of the decree-holder indicates abandonment or a positive refusal to perform the contract.

A significant aspect of the ruling is its emphasis on conduct rather than chronology.

The Court noted that readiness and willingness had already been conclusively found in favour of the decree-holder in the earlier rounds of litigation.

Against this backdrop, a delay of a few weeks in filing execution or depositing the balance amount could not be elevated into proof of unwillingness.

The real test, the Court observed, is not mathematical punctuality but whether the conduct of the purchaser demonstrates a clear intention to complete the transaction.

Equally important is the Court’s treatment of the doctrine of merger.

Once the second appeal was decided, the decree of the trial court merged into the High Court’s judgment.

The absence of a reiterated time-bound direction in the appellate judgment could not be read to revive or rigidly enforce the original two-month limit in a manner that nullified execution altogether.

The High Court, in effect, had allowed procedural objections to erase a decree that had otherwise attained finality.

By restoring the order of the executing court and directing execution of the sale deed, the Supreme Court reaffirmed a consistent line of authority that execution proceedings are meant to give effect to decrees, not frustrate them.

Hyper-technical objections, especially those divorced from the equities of the case, cannot be permitted to reopen settled issues or defeat decrees passed after prolonged litigation.

The ruling is a clear reminder to executing courts and High Courts alike that specific performance is an equitable remedy. While courts are entitled to fix timelines to ensure diligence, those timelines are not intended to operate as traps for the unwary.

Where the intention to perform remains intact and no prejudice is shown, procedural delay cannot be allowed to eclipse substantive justice a principle the Supreme Court of India has once again firmly placed at the centre of contract enforcement jurisprudence.