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M/s Greater Ashoka and Land Development Company vs Kanti Prasad Jain (Deceased) Through LRs

Civil Appeal · 2023 INSC 1055Decided 6 Dec 2023
Civil Appeal Nos. 7990-7991 of 2023
Vikram Nath · Rajesh Bindal

Background

In 1963, the appellant company advertised residential plots in a Faridabad colony at Rs. 25 per square yard. The respondent paid partial booking money for a plot but never paid the balance. Over the following decades, two new state laws required the developer to obtain fresh permissions for the colony, delaying the project for years. In 1982, the developer offered the respondent a substitute plot at a much higher rate (Rs. 135 per square yard) but the respondent, instead of accepting or refusing outright, asked for clarifying details that were never furnished, then sent a legal notice demanding registration at the original 1963 rate. When nothing happened, he sued for specific performance (or, alternatively, refund with damages) in 1986: more than 20 years after the original booking.

Decision Breakdown

The trial court and, eventually, the High Court sided with the respondent and ordered execution of the sale deed at the original low rate. The Supreme Court found that after six decades of delay, changed circumstances, and the sheer rise in land values, forcing a sale at the 1963 price was neither fair nor practical, and noted that the respondent's own suit had itself pleaded refund of earnest money with damages as an alternative relief. Balancing the developer's admitted fault in the delay against the impracticality of enforcing a 60-year-old rate, the Court modified the High Court's decree: instead of registering the sale deed at Rs. 25 per square yard, the appellant was directed to pay the respondent a lump sum of Rs. 50,00,000 (fifty lakh rupees) within three months as full and final settlement.

Lesson Learnt

Courts retain the flexibility, even at the final appellate stage, to substitute a fair monetary settlement for literal specific performance of a decades-old contract when intervening circumstances (law changes, extreme delay, drastic value shifts) make the original bargain impractical to enforce as originally struck.

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

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