A 1980 sauda receipt, a suit dismissed in 2002, and a first appeal decided in 2026 in the buyer's favour
Justice Sandeep N. Bhatt allowed a first appeal under Section 96, holding the buyer was ready and willing and that time was not of the essence under an informal receipt.
The agreement was made on 5 February 1980 over 0.85 hectare of agricultural land at village Rau, outside Indore. The suit for specific performance was dismissed on 22 March 2002. The first appeal was filed the same year and decided on 9 October 2026. By then both the original buyer and the original seller were dead and the case was being carried on by their legal representatives. The High Court allowed the appeal, holding that the trial court had gone wrong on readiness and willingness, on whether time was of the essence, and on admissions in the written statement that it never addressed.
What the parties did in 1980
The total consideration agreed was Rs 28,501, of which Rs 5,001 was paid as earnest money to the seller and recorded by way of a receipt. Possession of the land was handed over to the buyer under that transaction. On 6 March 1980 the buyer published a notice in a newspaper about the agreement he had entered into. On 15 May 1980 he paid a fee to the Indore Development Authority to obtain the necessary documents and permission.
The buyer's case was that he remained ready and willing to pay the balance of Rs 23,500, and that because the seller did not execute the sale deed he issued a notice on 5 January 1981. The reply he received was evasive, no sale deed followed, and the sign board he had put up on the land was removed. The original seller then died, and the contesting defendant sold the land to a third party.
Readiness and willingness, measured by conduct
The requirement in Section 16(c) of the Specific Relief Act is that the plaintiff must plead and prove that he has performed, or has always been ready and willing to perform, the essential terms of the contract. The High Court found the trial court had erred in holding this unsatisfied. The buyer gave public notice of the agreement within a month of the receipt, took steps with the development authority, and issued a legal notice in January 1981. Measured by what he actually did, the Court held he could not be said to have been unready or unwilling.
An informal receipt, and what follows from it
The second finding concerns the nature of the document. What the parties signed was a sauda receipt, not a formal agreement setting out conditions. In the absence of such a document the Court held that time could not be said to be of the essence of the contract — the parties had not made it so, and a court cannot supply the stipulation afterwards.
The Court was candid about one feature of the record: an interpolation in the document does create suspicion. But suspicion about an alteration was not enough, on these facts, to defeat a claim otherwise supported by possession, part payment and contemporaneous conduct.
The admission the trial court passed over
The third finding is procedural. In the first paragraph of the written statement the defendant had accepted both the plaintiff's ownership and his possession. Under Order 12 Rule 6 of the Code of Civil Procedure a court may give judgment on admissions, and the High Court held the trial court failed to take this relevant aspect into consideration at all.
There was also history. In an earlier round the court had passed a decree in 1995, pursuant to which a sale deed had already been executed in favour of the plaintiff by the court itself.
Order
The High Court held that the trial court had committed a gross error, in law and on fact, in appreciating the pleadings and the documentary and oral evidence on record, and that the prayers in the plaint were required to be allowed. The appeal was allowed in exercise of the power under Section 96 of the Code of Civil Procedure, with a direction that the decree be drawn accordingly and that the record of the trial court be remitted along with a copy of the judgment after the necessary formalities.