Supreme Court orders High Courts to ensure lower courts decide execution petitions within 6 months or.....

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed all High Courts across the country to collect information from district judiciary on civil execution petitions pending before various courts, and to issue directions to the district judiciary to ensure that such petitions are disposed of within six months. .A Bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan warned that failure to do so would make the presiding officer answerable to the High Court on its administrative side."We direct all the High Courts across the country to call for the necessary information from their respective district judiciary as regards pendency of the execution petitions. Once the data is collected by each of the High Courts, the High Courts shall thereafter proceed to issue an administrative order or circular, directing their respective district judiciary to ensure that the execution petitions pending in various courts shall be decided and disposed of within a period of six months without fail otherwise the concerned presiding officer would be answerable to the High Court on its administrative side. Once the entire data along with the figures of pendency and disposal thereafter, is collected by all the High Courts, the same shall be forwarded to the Registry of this Court with individual reports," the top court ordered.Decree-holders must be able to “reap the fruits of the decree” without undue delay, the Court explained the rationale for its directions. The order was passed while setting aside a Madras High Court order in a 4-decade-old property dispute..The case stemmed from a 1986 suit for specific performance of a land sale agreement. The plaintiff in that case had obtained a decree for sale of the property, but even after decades, his legal heirs (appellants) had not received possession of the land due to protracted execution proceedings and objections by third parties.The Madras High Court had at one stage deleted the names of two respondents from the execution proceedings, and an executing court later allowed an application under Section 47 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) by those respondents objecting to the execution of the decree. This effectively stalled the execution..Criticizing this approach, the Supreme Court noted that all questions relating to rights in the property must be adjudicated expeditiously under Order XXI Rules 97–101 CPC rather than through circuitous litigation. It observed that the High Court’s refusal to permit amendments to the execution petition (to implead or address the objectors) was erroneous and deserved to be set aside.Therefore, the Court allowed the appeal and set aside the High Court’s judgment as well as the executing court’s order that had accepted the objectors’ claim. It ordered the executing court to promptly enforce the decree. “The executing Court shall ensure that the vacant and peaceful possession of the suit property is handed over to the Appellants in their capacity as decree-holders… And if necessary, with the aid of police,” the Court directed, giving a two-month timeline for compliance..The judgement also addressed the systemic issue of delay in executing decrees. “Before we close this matter, we firmly believe that we should say something as regards the long and inordinate delay at the end of the Executing Courts across the country in deciding execution petitions,” the Court said..It pointed out that in the 2021 decision in Rahul S Shah v. Jinendra Kumar Gandhi, the Supreme Court had laid down comprehensive guidelines to streamline execution proceedings – including a directive that execution proceedings be completed within six months from the date of filing, save in exceptional cases. That six-month rule was reiterated in a 2022 decision in Bhoj Raj Garg v. Goyal Education & Welfare Society, yet execution petitions continue to face inordinate delays, the Court lamented..In this backdrop, the Supreme Court issued sweeping directions to all High Courts to ensure compliance with the execution timeline. After compliance, the High Courts have to forward reports along with pendency and disposal figures to the Supreme Court registry. The apex court further directed that a copy of the judgment be circulated to all High Courts for necessary action..The appellants were represented by Senior Advocate Senthil Jagadeesan along with advocates Punit Manoj Agarwwal, Vaibhav and Mrinal Kanwar while the Respondents were represented by Advocates Rahul Jain and Vishnu Shankar Jain..[Read Judgment]