The main legal point established in the judgment is that the period of limitation for instituting a suit for compensation on account of breach of contract is three years as per Article 55 of the Limitation Act, and once time has begun to run, it continues running as per Section 9 of the Act.

Hima Kohli, J.:-

1. The plaintiff has instituted the present suit against the defendants/DAV College Managing Committee praying inter alia for recovery of a sum of Rs. 41,75,625/- towards damages along with interest.

2. The case has been placed before the court by the learned Joint Registrar who had recorded in the order dated 10.12.2014 that the suit appears to be barred by limitation.

3. As per the averments made in the plaint, the plaintiff is in the business of undertaking construction work for government departments and other bodies and had participated in a pre-qualification tender for construction of a building at Pehowa, Kurukshetra, Haryana, in terms of an advertisement dated 13.1.2010 issued by the defendant No. 1, inviting bids. Upon the tender process being finalized, the work was awarded in favour of the plaintiff on 16.6.2010. On 5.8.2010, an agreement was executed between the plaintiff and the defendants. As per the conditions stipulated in said agreement, the work was to be completed by the plaintiff by 15.3.2011. The plaintiff has averred that though they had arranged the entire resources at the construction site for executing the work, the defendants had failed to make the drawings available to its officers. The plaintiff claims that having failed to take necessary steps in furtherance to the contract, the defendants had breached their obligations under the said contract.

4. As per the plaintiff, though the first phase of the work at the site was to be completed in less than one year, reckoned from 5.8.2010, the date when the agreement was executed, the defendant No. 2 had failed to respond to the repeated requests made by it for being provided the drawings of the construction required to be undertaken at the site. The plaintiff has averred in the plaint that it had written a letter dated 28.9.2010 to the defendant No. 2 for supplying the drawings, followed by a letter dated 19.2.2011, asking for release of the mobilization expenses incurred by it, but the defendants had not responded and finally, the plaintiff was compelled to institute the present suit, for claiming recovery of a sum of Rs. 41,75,625/-, on account of mobilization and de-mobilization of resources, idle labour, bank charges and earnest money etc. deposited with the defendants, as detailed in para 17 of the plaint.

5. It has been stated in para 20 of the plaint that the plaintiff had waited for one and a half years in anticipation of payments to be made by the defendants in terms of the invoice raised by it on 19.2.2011, but since the defendants remained impervious, it had to issue a legal notice dated 5.1.2013. The defendants did reply to the aforesaid legal notice on 22.8.2013, but they had denied their liability to pay any amount to the plaintiff.

6. The records reveal that the present suit was instituted by the plaintiff on 13.11.2014 whereas it had raised an invoice on the defendants for expenses allegedly incurred by it under the contract, on 19.2.2011. In other words, by the time the present suit was instituted, the period of three years prescribed under the Limitation Act had already expired. In fact, the prescribed period of limitation would have expired on 19.2.2014, whereas the suit has been instituted nine months thereafter.

7. Counsel for the plaintiff insists that the suit is not barred by limitation and seeks to refer to the reply dated 22.08.2013 sent by the defendants to the plaintiff’s legal notice and states that they had admitted therein that the agreement in question had never been acted upon. He submits that the date of the said admission should be taken into consideration for calculating the limitation for purposes of instituting the present suit.

8. The Limitation Act, 1963 prescribes a limitation of three years for instituting a suit for compensation on account of breach of a contract under Article 55 of the Schedule attached thereto and the said period of three years has to be reckoned from the date when the contra