The court affirmed that the executing court retains discretion to extend time for deposit of sale consideration under Section 28 of the Specific Relief Act, and the doctrine of merger applies to decrees from appellate courts.

JUDGMENT :

(J.B. Pardiwala, J.)

1. Leave granted.

2. Since the issues raised in all the captioned appeals are same, the parties are also same and the challenge is also to the self-same judgment and order passed by the High Court those were taken up for hearing analogously and are being disposed of by this common judgment and order.

3. These appeals arise from the judgment and order passed by the High Court of Punjab & Haryana at Chandigarh dated 09.09.2022 in Civil Revision No. 6706 of 2019, Civil Revision No. 6952 of 2019, Civil Revision No. 6980 of 2019 and Civil Revision No. 7053 of 2019 respectively by which the High Court rejected all the four revision applications filed by the original defendants by a common order and thereby affirmed the order passed by the executing court permitting the original plaintiff to deposit the balance sale consideration and rejecting the application filed by the defendants (judgment debtors) under Section 28 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 (For short, “the Act”) for rescission of contract.

4. The facts of this litigation giving rise to these appeals as recorded by the High Court in its impugned judgment read thus:

“2. Four connected revision petitions have come up for final disposal. The learned counsel representing the parties are ad idem that these four revision petitions can, conveniently, be disposed of by a common order.

3. Some peculiar facts are required to be noticed. As many as four different suits for grant of specific performance of the agreement to sell were decreed by the trial Court on 16.08.1994. Four identical conditional decrees for specific performance of the agreement to sell were passed while permitting the decree holder to deposit the balance sale consideration in the Court within a period of 20 days and the defendant was directed to get the sale deed executed in favour of the plaintiffs. However, the judgments and decrees passed by the trial Court were reversed on 24.11.1994 by the First Appellate Court, which led to filing of four regular second appeals. The High Court allowed three regular second appeals on 03.05.2018, whereas, the fourth one was allowed 24.05.2018. Resultantly, the decrees passed by the trial Court were restored. The decree sheets were prepared on 31. 05 .2018 and a copy thereof was supplied to the plaintiffs. They filed four execution petitions on 04.09.2018. On 07.09.2018, applications to deposit the amount were also filed. The judgment debtors also filed an application under Section 28 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 {hereinafter referred to as "the 1963 Act'') for rescission of the contract on account of non-payment of the remaining sale consideration. The decree holder as permitted by the Court, deposited the decreetal amount in the Court on 07.09.2018. Consequently, on 16.08.2019, the Executing Court has dismissed the application for rescission of the contract. These four revision petitions have been filed for setting aside the orders dated 07.09.2018 and 16.08.2019.”

5. The High Court proceeded to record the submissions canvassed by the parties as under:

“5. On one hand, the learned counsel representing the judgment debtors contends that as per the trial Court's judgment dated 16.08.1994, the amount was required to be deposited within a period of 20 days. Since the decree holders have failed to deposit the amount within the stipulated time, the contract was required to be rescinded. He further contends that the High Court, while allowing the regular second appeals, on 03.05.2018 and 24.05.2018, respectively, restored the judgment and decree passed by the trial Court. He submits that at the most, the amount could be deposited within a period of 20 days from 03.05.2018 and 24.05.2018, respectively. Since the decree holders failed to deposit the amount, therefore, the contract should have been ordered to be rescinded. He, in support of his submission~, relies upon the judgment passed by the Supreme Court in Prem Jeevan v. K.S. Venkata Raman and Another