LegalAware
LegalAware.ai
EMPOWERING LEGAL AWARENESS

Aditya Khaitan & Ors. vs IL and FS Financial Services Limited

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 867Decided 3 Oct 2023
Civil Appeal Nos. 6411-6418 of 2023
J.K. Maheshwari · K.V. Viswanathan

Background

IL and FS Financial Services Limited filed a commercial recovery suit against nine defendants (the appellants) in the Calcutta High Court in August 2019. Summons was served in February 2020, giving 30 days (extendable to a 120-day outer limit) to file written statements, but this window fell squarely within the COVID-19 lockdown period. The defendants filed their written statements only in January 2021, relying on the Supreme Court's suo motu orders extending limitation periods nationwide due to the pandemic, but the High Court refused to take the written statements on record, holding (based on an earlier Supreme Court ruling, Sagufa Ahmed) that the extension applied only to limitation for filing suits, not the outer condonable period for written statements, which had already expired before the pandemic orders began.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that later orders passed in the same suo motu COVID limitation proceedings (dated March 2021, April 2021, and September 2021) had gone further than the earlier orders considered in Sagufa Ahmed, expressly excluding the pandemic period even from the outer limits within which delay could be condoned: a point already recognised in the Court's subsequent decision in Prakash Corporates vs. Dee Vee Projects. Applying this expanded protection, the Court found that once the COVID-period exclusion was properly applied, the defendants' written statements filed in January 2021 were actually within time. It therefore set aside the High Court's judgment and directed that the written statements be taken on record, allowing the suit to proceed.

Lesson Learnt

Limitation periods suspended by the Supreme Court's pandemic-era orders were later clarified to cover not just the time for filing a case but also the outer limits for condoning delay in related procedural steps like written statements: litigants and courts must look at the full, later sequence of these orders rather than relying on an earlier, narrower interpretation.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

More rulings in Civil Procedure

Civil ProcedureDelhi High Court

Smt Nisha Sharma vs. M/S Intec Capital Limited and Ors

The Court held that because the property had already been specifically identified in the pending execution case before the transfer happened, the transfer remained subject to the execution proceedings under Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act, and didn't place the share beyond the lender's reach. It also found the appellant couldn't reopen the same ownership argument a second time, since an identical objection had already been rejected earlier and not appealed, and that the surrounding facts (payment timing, continued family occupation, auction bought by a relative) suggested the transfer was intended to defeat the lender's claim. The appeal was dismissed and the auction sale of the guarantor's half-share was upheld.

Decided 6 Oct 2026Read case
Civil ProcedureDelhi High Court

Shakeel Qureshi & Ors. vs. Rashid Qureshi & Ors.

The Court held that since the plaintiffs' own claims were entirely built on the MoU, the MoU's exclusionary jurisdiction clause (Clause 10, conferring jurisdiction only on Bareilly courts) had to be examined and applied. It rejected the plaintiffs' "approbate and reprobate" argument (that defendants couldn't rely on the MoU in other suits yet deny Delhi's jurisdiction here), finding the defendants' conduct in earlier, differently-framed suits didn't amount to such inconsistency. The plaint was returned under Order VII Rule 10 CPC to be filed before a court of competent jurisdiction at Bareilly, without any opinion expressed on the merits of the fraud/breach allegations.

Decided 6 Oct 2026Read case
Civil ProcedureDelhi High Court

M/S Siddhivinayak Coal Carriers Pvt. Ltd. vs. Coal India Limited & Ors.

The Division Bench held that an appeal under Section 13 of the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 only lies against orders specifically listed in Order XLIII of the CPC or Section 37 of the Arbitration Act, relying on Supreme Court authority (Kandla Export Corporation) confirming this is an exhaustive, not illustrative, list. Since an order converting a summary suit into a regular suit isn't among the orders listed in Order XLIII, the appeal was dismissed as not maintainable.

Decided 6 Oct 2026Read case
Civil ProcedureDelhi High Court

Ramesh vs. Smt. Geeta

The High Court agreed with the lower courts that the document recorded only a loan transaction, not a sale, so the appellant's argument about an illegal/void sale (under Section 23 of the Contract Act) didn't apply. Since the respondent was relying on her own allotment rights rather than enforcing the disputed document, and the appeal really just disputed how the evidence had been weighed, no substantial legal question arose, and the second appeal was dismissed.

Decided 6 Oct 2026Read case
Civil ProcedureDelhi High Court

Pooja Singh vs. Gulab Devi Prasad Singh

While the appeal was pending, the parties settled the matter in execution proceedings for Rs. 9,50,000, and part of that settlement had already been acted upon. Rs. 1,98,000 had been paid to the Plaintiff, and the balance of Rs. 7,52,000 had been deposited in the High Court. The Court held that the Defendant could not go back on a settlement that had been acted upon, and that no monetary dispute remained for adjudication. The Court directed that the deposited balance be released to the Plaintiff and disposed of the appeal in terms of the settlement.

Decided 5 Oct 2026Read case
Civil ProcedureDelhi High Court

Richmond Global School vs. Shri Vijay Kumar Jain

The Court considered the legal meaning of "sufficient cause", explaining that it requires the party to show that it was not negligent or lacking in bona fides, and that the facts must support the exercise of discretion judiciously. Finding that the District Judge's view was correct, the High Court held that the appeal was devoid of merit and dismissed it, with no order as to costs.

Decided 5 Oct 2026Read case