Insights & Analysis
Common Areas, RERA, and the Arbitration Clause: Calcutta High Court Declines to Disturb Interim Protection for a Condominium's Shared Spaces
In Forum Projects Private Limited v. Gaurav Karnani, the Calcutta High Court upheld an arbitral tribunal's order appointing a surveyor and restraining a developer from altering the common areas of a Kolkata condominium, holding that protective interim measures under Section 17 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act do not require the tribunal to first decide a pending objection to arbitrability, and declining itself to rule on whether RERA ousts arbitration over common-area disputes.
13 min readDifferent Statute, Different Subject Matter: Delhi High Court Refuses to Let a Concluded DGGI Fraud Probe Shield a Separate Section 73 Demand
A script-services company facing a ₹10.57 crore input tax credit demand argued that a state GST officer's proceedings were barred because the Directorate General of GST Intelligence had already investigated it — and that investigation had since concluded. The Delhi High Court disagreed on every ground: the statutory appeal was never filed, the writ came two years late, and the two notices, issued under different sections for different reasons, were never the same subject matter to begin with.
13 min readTwo and a Half Years Too Late: Telangana High Court Declines to Examine a Section 62 Best-Judgment Assessment on the Ground of Delay
A taxpayer challenged a best-judgment GST assessment order two and a half years after it was passed, arguing that filing his return afterwards meant the order stood automatically withdrawn. The Telangana High Court never reached that argument — it dismissed the petition for delay, exposing a gap between the taxpayer's account of why he could not act sooner and the actual timeline on record.
13 min readAn Unreplied Legal Notice and a Wrongly Dated Stamp Paper: Kerala High Court Affirms a Specific Performance Decree
In Francis @ Kuruvila v. N.T. Joseph, the Kerala High Court upheld a trial court's decree for specific performance of a 2007 agreement to sell 56.5 cents of land, rejecting the defendant's claim that the agreement was fabricated from blank stamp papers he had handed over for an unrelated 2002 loan — a claim undone by his own admitted signature on a later payment endorsement, an unanswered legal notice, and a stamp paper that was, on the record, purchased only in 2007.
13 min readSupreme Court Holds a Hindu Widow's Statutory Share Ripens Into Absolute Ownership Without Formal Partition
In Ganapati v. Prabhakar, the Supreme Court dismissed a decades-old title suit, holding that a Hindu widow's half-share on her husband's intestate death under Section 3(2) of the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act, 1937 matures into full ownership under Section 14(1) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 without any requirement that she first obtain a partition or prove possession as owner — a widow's will disposing of that share, and a sale by her legatee, therefore stood.
14 min read629 Noticees, One Order: Delhi High Court Declines a GST Writ Challenge, Distinguishing ASP Traders on Natural Justice
When a single Order-in-Original runs to 1,881 pages and names 629 firms and individuals in an alleged fake-invoicing racket, does an individual noticee's claim that its reply was never considered open the door to a writ petition? The Delhi High Court says no — and distinguishes the Supreme Court's ASP Traders on the ground that a mass adjudication order is not the same as an unreasoned order against a single assessee.
14 min readBagasse Is Not 'Manufactured': CESTAT Hyderabad Applies DSCL Sugar to Quash an ₹80.28 Lakh Cenvat Credit Demand Against Gayatri Sugars
A decade after the Supreme Court in Union of India v. DSCL Sugar Ltd. settled that bagasse is agricultural waste and not the result of any manufacturing process, sugar mills are still fighting the same demand under Rule 6(3) of the Cenvat Credit Rules. CESTAT Hyderabad's Final Order in Gayatri Sugars shows why the point keeps recurring — and what it takes to close it out on appeal.
14 min readSupreme Court Clarifies When a Limitation Plea Can Be Tried as a Preliminary Issue in Title Suits
In John Mathew v. Santha Paul, the Supreme Court set aside a decade of rulings on limitation in a suit challenging a power-of-attorney sale deed, holding that Order XIV Rule 2(2) CPC permits a qualifying issue to be tried first only before the court has embarked on a composite trial of all issues — not after evidence has already been led. The Court also left open, for retrial, whether the suit is governed by the three-year period for cancelling an instrument or the twelve-year period for recovering possession.
13 min readSupreme Court: A Section 28A Compensation Claim Runs From the Reference Court's Award, Not From an Appeal That Merely Repeats an Earlier One
In New Okhla Industrial Development Authority v. Rajveer Singh, the Supreme Court rejected a Section 28A claim filed after a second appellate order that simply followed an earlier appellate enhancement in the same village, holding that the three-month limitation had already run from the first enhancement and could not be revived by a later order adding nothing new.
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