On 17th February, 2026, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India gave its judgment in the case of Babu Singh (D) Thr. LRS & Anr. vs. Jalandhar Improvement Trust & Anr. The case was filed as a Special Leave Petition (SLP) challenging an order from the Hon’ble Punjab & Haryana High Court, which had upheld the Learned Executing Court’s dismissal of an execution application. The legal issue was concerning the limitation period for executing a decree of mandatory injunction under Article 135 of the Schedule to the Limitation Act, 1963, particularly when the original decree does not specify a fixed date for performance.
The case began with a suit filed by the late Babu Singh against the Jalandhar Improvement Trust over cancelled plot allotments. The Learned Trial Court dismissed the suit, but the Learned First Appellate Court overturned that decision on January 6, 2005, granting a mandatory injunction ordering the Trust to follow certain development orders. However, the decree-holders waited until August 12, 2010, which is more than five years later, to file an execution application to enforce the injunction.
The Learned Execution Court dismissed the 2010 application, ruling it was time-barred under Article 135. This article sets a three-year limit to execute a mandatory injunction, starting from the decree date or, if a performance date is fixed, from that date. Since the 2005 decree didn’t specify a performance date, the three-year period started when the decree was passed and had already expired by the time the execution was requested.
In its final conclusion, the Bench comprising Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Manmohan found no grounds to interfere with the Learned Executing Court and Hon’ble High Court’s decisions. The Hon’ble Supreme Court reaffirmed that the statutory language of Article 135 is clear, that in the absence of a fixed performance date, the clock for execution starts on the date of the decree. Since the petitioners’ application was limited to the execution of the mandatory injunction, the Hon’ble Court held it was rightly dismissed as time-barred. As a result, the Special Leave Petition was dismissed, reaffirming the importance of timely legal action in the execution of judicial decrees.
Judgment D