Executing courts must decide cases in 6 months: High Court

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that the executing courts are duty-bound to decide execution petitions within six months of their filing as mandated by the Supreme Court. The court also made it clear that delaying tactics by judgment debtors—those required to comply with a decree—must not be allowed to frustrate the process as the executing court was responsible for ensuring compliance with Supreme Court directions in letter and spirit. 

“The executing courts are obligated and under a duty to dispose of execution petitions within a period of six months from the date of filing. It is also not unknown that judgment debtors try to delay the proceedings by filing one application or the other. It would, however, be for the executing court to deal with such tactics and comply with the directions issued by the Supreme Court of India in letter and spirit,” Justice Vikram Aggarwal asserted, while citing the Supreme Court’s judgment in the case of “Rahul S. Shah versus Jinendra Kumar Gandhi and others”.

The development is significant as obtaining a decree from the courts below seldom comes with a sense of triumph for the winning side, as the real battle begins in getting it executed. The entire process, embroiled in technicalities, takes years and years. The Apex Court has already asserted that the decree holders are entitled to enjoy fruits of the decree expeditiously.

Execution is considered to be the final the last stage of civil litigation, which begins with the institution of a suit, followed by its adjudication and its implementation. Rather, the implementation of the order or decree in civil litigation is termed as execution. It had often been referred to as method by which a decree-holder forces his opponent judgement-debtor to implement the mandate of the decree. The high court in one of its orders had earlier referred to Privy Council’s observations made 150 years ago that “the difficulties of a litigant in India begin when he has obtained a decree”

The ruling by Justice Aggarwal came in response to a petition filed by a person for issuance of a direction to the executing court to decide his execution petition in a time-bound manner. The Bench was told that he was seeking the execution of a final partition decree passed in his favor in 2013. Despite the decree, the execution petition filed in 2017 remained pending.

Referring to the facts of the case in hand, the court asserted: “I have perused the interlocutory orders produced by counsel for the petitioner and find that delaying tactics are being adopted by the judgment debtors as a result of which the execution petition has not been decided… the present petition is disposed of with a direction to the court concerned to dispose of the execution petition as expeditiously as possible but not later than two months from today”.