Supreme Court of India
22 articles
A Sale Needs a Sale Deed: Suraj Lamp & Industries v. State of Haryana on GPA Sales and SA/GPA/Will Transfers
An agreement to sell, an irrevocable power of attorney and a will, however carefully assembled, do not add up to a sale. The Supreme Court's 2011 reference judgment remains the starting point for any due-diligence review of a property held on such papers.
7 min readBid With Open Eyes, Pay on Time: Supreme Court on Forfeiture of Earnest Money and Part-Payments by a Defaulting Bidder in a Liquidation Auction of Land
A bidder for a Sonepat land parcel sold in IBC liquidation paid a quarter of its bid, then asked for the title deeds and missed the deadlines. The Supreme Court held that the auction notice's forfeiture clause governed, and that the Liquidation Process Regulations' silence on forfeiture did not help the bidder.
14 min readSanctity Is the Reward of Legality: Supreme Court Quashes a SARFAESI Auction Sale of a Hill Resort Over Restraint-Order Bids, a Truncated Notice Period and a Nominee Purchaser
A mortgaged hill resort, a sale certificate issued to a firm that did not bid, and a bid received while a tribunal's restraint was in force: the Supreme Court held that the auction was illegal in its entirety, and that the finality attaching to auction sales is earned only by compliance with the statutory procedure.
14 min readParity, Severance and the Limits of Solatium: Supreme Court Restores Rs. 5 Lakh an Acre for the Aspal Extension Drain Acquisition
A 47-appeal batch on land taken for a drain in Fazilka. The Supreme Court rejects a distance-based valuation model, moves the severance baseline to the land left behind, and reaffirms that solatium attaches only to the value of the land.
14 min readInjunction First, Specific Performance Never: Supreme Court Applies Order II Rule 2 to Defeat a Suit on an Oral Agreement to Sell
In Bombay Garage Ahmedabad Limited v. J P Iscon Private Limited, the Supreme Court held that a withdrawn suit for injunction simpliciter, filed without leave to claim specific performance, bars a later suit for that relief, and that a heavy burden on the plaintiff to prove a concluded oral contract is not discharged by the defendants' evasive evidence.
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 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.
13 min readSupreme Court: A Second Appeal Cannot Trade an Upheld Specific Performance Decree for Cash
In Sobaran Singh v. Gordhan Singh, the Supreme Court reversed a High Court order that had upheld a trial court's findings on a decades-old specific performance suit, yet substituted the decreed sale with a large cash payment 'to maintain equity.' The Court restored the original 1979 decree, holding that once the buyer's readiness and willingness stood affirmed and the sale had already been executed through the court in 1979, there was no discretionary room left to convert the transaction into compensation four and a half decades later, particularly where the buyer had been in continuous possession throughout.
13 min readSupreme Court: A Lessee Cannot Use Article 226 to Reopen a Title Dispute Its Landlord Already Lost
Deciding an appeal arising from a decades-old encroachment dispute over land in Hyderabad, the Supreme Court held that lessees claiming through a trust could not invoke Article 226 to protect their possession once the trust itself — after losing before the Division Bench and withdrawing its own Special Leave Petition with liberty only to file a fresh suit — was barred from doing so. The lessees' writ petitions, filed in their own names soon after the trust's remedy was confined to a civil suit, were themselves an attempt to keep the writ route open by other means.
12 min readSupreme Court: A Claim of Religious Dedication and a Claim of Adverse Possession Cannot Both Stand
Dismissing an appeal by a Dera's legal representatives, the Supreme Court has held that a party cannot simultaneously claim that land was dedicated to it and that it separately perfected title by adverse possession, and that decades of revenue entries recording rent-free religious possession do not, without more, establish either.
13 min readSupreme Court Holds NOIDA Cannot Deny 'Zero Period' Relief Over an Access Road It Never Built
Dismissing NOIDA's appeal, the Supreme Court has held that a public authority's own policy for excusing stalled construction cannot be read as strictly as a statute, and that a developer left without the frontage its lease deed promised is entitled to relief regardless of whether some other, inferior access existed.
13 min readSupreme Court Fixes the Cut-Off Date for Solatium in National Highway Land Acquisitions
Deciding a long-running dispute over which compensation regime governs highway land acquisitions, the Supreme Court has held that the reference date is the Competent Authority's own determination of compensation under the National Highways Act, 1956 — not the date the acquisition proceedings began, and not a later arbitral award on a disputed quantum.
13 min readSupreme Court Doubts the 'Fraudulent Intent' Test for Stamp Duty Undervaluation, Refers the Question to a Larger Bench
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court has cast doubt on a sixteen-year-old precedent requiring proof of dishonest intent before a registering authority can refer an undervalued sale deed for a stamp-duty enquiry — and referred the question to a larger Bench rather than decide it alone.
13 min readA Forty-Year-Old Land Title Cannot Be Reopened by Recasting the Dispute as Encroachment, Supreme Court Holds
A department reopened a forty-year-old land record on the strength of a third-party complaint that a lake was being encroached upon. The Supreme Court held that framing the dispute as one of public interest does not let a revenue authority sidestep a statutory limitation period that had expired decades earlier.
13 min readA Bankrupt Developer's Lease Penalty Is Not the Homebuyers' Debt, Supreme Court Holds
When a NOIDA-leased housing project collapsed into insolvency, the development authority sought years of penalty charges for the developer's own delay from the very homebuyers who had pooled their savings to finish construction. The Supreme Court says the penalty stays with the developer.
13 min readAn Assigned NBFC Loan Becomes a SARFAESI Debt the Moment a Bank Takes It Over, Supreme Court Holds
Three home and business borrowers argued that a debt born outside SARFAESI's reach cannot be dragged into it later just because a bank buys the loan. The Supreme Court disagreed, and the ruling reaches every residential flat standing behind an assigned NBFC mortgage.
13 min readNo Membership, No Plot: Supreme Court Closes a Seven-Decade Cooperative Housing Society Allotment Dispute
A claim to a cooperative society plot that began in 1952 has finally ended, seventy-four years and one prior Supreme Court round later — decided not on the equities of land allotment but on how far a writ court may go in re-examining a tribunal's finding of fact.
14 min readA Non Obstante Clause That Bites: Supreme Court Upholds Customs Duty on Pilfered Goods Against a Statutory Port Trust
A port trust argued that its custody of imported cargo came from its own constituting statute, so the customs authorities had no power to notify it as a duty-bearing custodian. The Supreme Court draws a careful line between a saving clause and a non obstante clause to reject that argument — while denying the department any actual recovery in the case before it.
13 min readBland Recitals Will Not Do: Supreme Court Quashes a Section 74 GST Notice for Want of Foundational Facts of Fraud or Suppression
An audit objection, a notice parked in the department's own 'call book', and a bare assertion of suppression were not enough to invoke GST's extended limitation period. The Supreme Court draws a sharp line between reciting the words of Section 74 and actually pleading the facts that justify it.
13 min readMutation Is Not Title: Jamnabai v. Vasudev on Revenue Entries, Relinquishment and the Limits of Second Appeal
A name removed from the revenue record in 1990 did not cost a co-owner his share. This case note works through all four issues the Supreme Court decided in Jamnabai v. Vasudev, from Section 117 of the MP Land Revenue Code to the proviso to Section 34 of the Specific Relief Act.
14 min readHe Who Seeks Equity Must Do Equity: V.N.A.S. Chandran v. S. Venila on Conduct, Delay and Discretion in Specific Performance
The buyers may well have been able to pay. They still lost the property. This case note examines how inconsistent conduct, a retaliatory FIR and two decades of delay defeated a decree of specific performance.
14 min read