Published on: 11 September 2023 at 11:08 IST
Court: Supreme Court of India
Citation: Babu Lal V. Hazari Lal Kishori Lal (1982)
Honourable Supreme Court of India has held that Section 22 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 is useful to avoid multiplicity of proceedings the plaintiff may claim a decree for possession in a suit for specific performance, even though strictly speaking, the right to possession accrues only when suit for specific performance is decreed.
It is held that there may be circumstances in which a relief for possession cannot be effectively granted to the decree-holder without specifically claiming relief for possession viz. where the property agreed to be conveyed is jointly held by the defendant with other persons.
In such a case the plaintiff in order to obtain complete and effective relief must claim partition of the property and possession over the share of the defendant. It is in such cases that a relief for possession must be specifically pleaded.
12. The section enacts that a person in a suit for specific performance of a contract for the transfer of immovable property, may ask for appropriate reliefs, namely, he may ask for possession, or for partition or for separate possession including the relief for specific performance.
These reliefs he can claim, notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, to the contrary. Sub-section (2) of this section, however, specifically provides that these reliefs cannot be granted by the court, unless they have been expressly claimed by the plaintiff in the suit. Sub-section (2) of the section recognised in clear terms the well-established rule of procedure that the court should not entertain a claim of the plaintiff unless it has been specifically pleaded by the plaintiff and proved by him to be legally entitled to.
The proviso to this sub-section (2), however, says that where the plaintiff has not specifically claimed these reliefs in his plaint, in the initial stages of the suit, the court shall permit the plaintiff at any stage of the proceedings, to include one or more of the reliefs, mentioned above by means of an amendment of the plaint on such terms as it may deem proper. The only purpose of this newly enacted provision is to avoid multiplicity of suits and that the plaintiff may get appropriate relief without being hampered by procedural complications.
Drafted By Abhijit Mishra