The Supreme Court has held that an appellate court cannot grant a relief that was never sought in the pleadings and cannot compel a litigant to accept compensation in place of the relief originally claimed in the suit.

A Bench comprising Justice S. V. N. Bhatti and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar set aside a judgment of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had substituted decrees directing removal of alleged encroachments with an award of monetary compensation to the plaintiffs.

The dispute arose from two civil suits filed by the plaintiff seeking removal of an allegedly encroaching wall and lintel constructed by the defendants. The Trial Court decreed both suits, directing removal of the structures and restraining further construction. These findings were affirmed by the First Appellate Court.

In second appeals, the Punjab and Haryana High Court modified the decrees by treating the disputed wall as a common wall and directing payment of compensation to the plaintiffs. The matter later reached the Supreme Court, which in 2013 set aside the High Court's decision for failure to frame substantial questions of law as required under Section 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and remanded the case for fresh consideration.

Upon remand, the High Court again set aside the decrees and directed the Executing Court to assess the value of the disputed constructions and award compensation to the plaintiffs. Aggrieved by this course, the legal heirs of the original plaintiff approached the Supreme Court.

Allowing the appeals, the Supreme Court held that the High Court committed a fundamental error by compelling the plaintiffs to accept compensation despite the fact that no such relief had ever been claimed in the plaint.

The Court observed that a civil court cannot substitute the relief sought by a party with another form of relief merely because it considers such relief appropriate.

“There was no prayer whatsoever made by the original plaintiff seeking any damages or compensation from the defendants for the encroachment committed by them. In absence of any such relief sought by the original plaintiff, the decree passed in his favour could not have been set aside by the High Court by compelling his legal heirs to accept compensation.”

The Bench further noted that the plaintiffs had never consented to such a course of action and that the High Court could not impose a compensatory remedy without any pleading or prayer supporting it.

The Supreme Court also found fault with the High Court's direction requiring the Executing Court to determine compensation after setting aside the decrees in favour of the plaintiff.

The Court explained that once the decrees were set aside, no executable decree survived. Consequently, the Executing Court had no jurisdiction to undertake an exercise of assessing compensation in the absence of a subsisting decree.

“Once the decrees passed by the Trial Court in favour of the plaintiff were set aside, there would be no occasion for the Executing Court to proceed with the execution proceedings since there would be no decree holding the field for being executed.”

The Bench observed that such a direction was unsupported by the scheme of Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure, which governs execution proceedings.

Since the High Court's decision in the second appeals was not based on properly framed substantial questions of law, the Supreme Court directed the Punjab and Haryana High Court to reconsider the appeals in accordance with Section 100 CPC and decide them on their own merits. Considering that the second appeals have been pending since 2008, the Court requested the High Court to dispose of the matter expeditiously.

The judgment was delivered in Rajat Kumar & Others v. S D Adarsh Jain Kanya Maha Vidyalaya Sadhaura & Others.

Representation:-

For Appellant(s) : Ms. Sangeeta Kumar, AOR, Ms. Vidushi Garg, Adv.