Section 96(3) bars only parties: Supreme Court lets strangers appeal a consent decree, 11-year delay condoned
Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran hold that the bar on appealing a consent decree binds only the parties to the compromise, uphold Gujarat High Court leave to HUF members and an 11-year condonation, and keep the injunction over the land.
The Supreme Court on 30 October 2026 held that the bar on appealing a consent decree in Section 96(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure operates only against the parties to the compromise. A stranger whose independent rights are prejudiced by such a decree may appeal with the leave of the appellate court.
A bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran dismissed two appeals by Girishbhai Natwarlal Patel against Gujarat High Court orders that granted members of a Hindu Undivided Family leave to appeal a 2013 consent decree over agricultural land, condoned a delay of eleven years, and restrained Patel from dealing with the land.
The judgment, written by Justice Pardiwala and marked reportable, asks the High Court to decide the main appeal within three months. It stresses that nothing in it is a finding on the allegations of fraud and collusion, which remain open.
Two High Court orders under challenge
Patel’s appeals arose from two orders. An oral order of 2 April 2024 in Civil Application No. 1408 of 2024 granted an ex parte ad interim injunction against him. A judgment of 14 August 2024 then confirmed it, condoned the delay and granted leave to appeal in First Appeal No. 7226 of 2024.
The injunction restrained Patel and anyone acting for him from entering the land or selling, transferring, mortgaging, leasing or encumbering it until the next hearing. The High Court granted it to prevent multiplicity of proceedings while the appeal was decided.
Patel was not a party when that order was passed, so the Registry served him with the civil application. His counsel, Ms Vanu Nanavaty, sought an adjournment on 2 May 2024. The matter was then heard between the parties on four dates in July, argued at length on 25 July 2024 and reserved.
Fifty years of revenue entries
Senior Counsel Anshin H. Desai appeared for Patel. Senior Counsel Mihir J. Thakore and Ms Megha Jani appeared for respondents 1 to 9, the Palkhiwala family members who had sought leave to appeal.
Both sides began with the same document. On 29 August 1975 the original owner, Purshottambhai Punjabhai, sold the land by registered sale deed to Vikram Punjabhai Palkhiwala, the predecessor of respondents 1 to 9. Mutation Entry 3106 recorded the sale.
From there the accounts diverge. Patel’s version was that Entry 4018 of 10 June 1980, recording the land in the name of Punjalal Mohanbhai HUF, was cancelled on 16 August 1980 after Vikrambhai and his brother objected that the purchase was in Vikram’s individual capacity.
That cancellation, Patel said, stood for seventeen years. In that window a Deputy Collector’s order of 16 March 1993 in a tenancy appeal provided for the land to revert to its original position within three months if seller and purchaser agreed, failing which it would vest in the government.
The original owner’s name then reappeared in Village Forms 7 and 12. On 11 September 1996 his heirs executed a registered agreement to sell the land to Geetagram Cooperative Housing Society, respondent 10. Only on 20 November 1997 was Entry 4018 approved by the Mamlatdar and the HUF’s name re-entered, subject to pending civil proceedings.
The family told it differently. Tenancy proceedings between 1987 and 1997 ended with a Mamlatdar-Agricultural Tribunal order of 14 February 1994 upholding the 1975 transfer as one between agriculturists. Entry 7017, certified on 4 March 1995, recorded Vikram’s name. Purshottambhai died on 11 March 1995.
Entry 7597 of 20 November 1997, certified on 15 January 1998, then recorded the land as part of the HUF, of which respondents 1 to 9 are members. On their account the heirs of a man who had sold the land in 1975 had nothing left to agree to sell in 1996.
A suit, a compromise and a sale deed
In May 2012 Geetagram Society, through its chairman Ramesh Patel, sued the heirs of Purshottambhai in Civil Suit No. 322 of 2012 for specific performance of the 1996 agreement. On 29 April 2013 the heirs and the Society filed a compromise pursis, and the court passed a consent decree the same day.
Execution Application No. 725 of 2020 followed on 26 November 2020. On 18 June 2022 a Court Commissioner executed a registered sale deed in favour of Girishbhai Patel, with the Society as confirming party. Entry 5327 put Patel’s name in the revenue records.
The family said it discovered Patel’s name as occupant in Forms 8A, 7 and 12 only in 2023. Between 4 November 2023 and 9 February 2024 it gathered the mutation entries, and on 28 February 2024 filed the First Appeal with applications for leave, condonation, interim relief, impleadment of Patel and additional evidence.
On 21 March 2024 documents obtained under the RTI Act were placed on record by affidavit. The family said they showed Patel had been chairman of Geetagram Society at least in 2002-03. On 2 April 2024 it moved a draft amendment seeking interim orders against him, and the High Court granted the injunction that day.
Patel: no appeal lies against a consent decree
Desai’s first point was Section 96(3): no appeal lies from a decree passed by consent, and a non-party cannot acquire a cause of action to challenge it.
He relied on Triloki Nath Singh v. Anirudh Singh, (2020) 6 SCC 639, Pushpa Devi Bhagat v. Rajinder Singh, (2006) 5 SCC 566, and R. Janakiammal v. S.K. Kumarasamy, (2021) 9 SCC 114.
He argued that an ex parte injunction could not rest on a proposed draft amendment. He cited Acqua Borewell Pvt. Ltd. v. Swayam Prabha, (2022) 15 SCC 511, and Kishorsinh Ratansinh Jadeja v. Maruti Corporation, (2009) 11 SCC 229, on interim orders affecting absent third parties.
Continuing the injunction without impleading Patel, he said, was prejudicial to him.
The delay, he said, was condoned mechanically, without pleadings, and after the injunction had already been granted. He cited Union of India v. Jahangir Byramji Jeejeebhoy, Postmaster General v. Living Media, Oriental Aroma Chemical Industries v. GIDC, Lanka Venkateswarlu and Pundlik Jalam Patil.
Desai also attacked the family’s standing: if anyone was aggrieved it was the HUF, a distinct entity, not nine individuals.
He denied collusion. Every defendant had signed the compromise pursis, which recorded their agreement to execute sale deeds as the Society required, and no law barred a Court Commissioner conveying to an office-bearer of the Society.
The family, he added, had suppressed the seventeen-year cancellation of Entry 4018 and had challenged only the consent decree, not the execution proceedings or the 2022 sale deed.
The family: one man on both sides
Thakore’s case was that the 2012 suit was collusive from the start. On 22 March 2012, about six weeks before it was filed, the heirs of Purshottambhai executed a power of attorney in favour of Patel, and he filed the vakalatnama for the defendants. The man representing the defendants ended up owning the land.
He listed the other circumstances: a suit brought sixteen years after the agreement, disposed of by consent within a year; no execution for seven years; a sale deed to Patel in 2022 with the Society confirming; Patel’s chairmanship of the Society; and the absence of the Society and the heirs before the Supreme Court.
On delay, he said the Registry had initially returned the condonation application, since Gujarat High Court orders treat it as unnecessary when a non-party alleges a fraudulent decree. It was later filed on special mention. Patel’s objection to the injunction, he said, had been heard for six to seven hours before the 14 August order.
He relied on H. Anjanappa v. A. Prabhakar for the test of an aggrieved person, and told the Court that after 14 August 2024 Patel had begun construction on the land, placed on record by affidavit of 23 September 2024.
The question the Court framed
“Whether leave to appeal could have been granted to the original applicants/Respondent nos. 1-9, considering that they were not parties to the original suit which culminated in the consent decree sought to be appealed against?” (para 34)
Two other questions were framed alongside it: whether the injunction of 2 April 2024, continued on 14 August 2024, was sustainable, and whether condoning eleven years of delay was justified. The Court said at the outset that it was not deciding the merits of the appeal against the consent decree.
Why the injunction stands
The bench found no error in the injunction. Prima facie, serious doubts arose whether Purshottambhai’s heirs had any subsisting title to convey. Patel appeared to have acted under their power of attorney while having close links with the plaintiff Society.
The allegation that he was connected with both sides and ended up as the beneficiary of the consent decree, the Court said, assumed significance.
On the sequence objection, the Court said neither the family nor Patel was a party to the suit. The impleadment application could be heard only after the family made good its case for leave.
Had the family been made to wait for both decisions before seeking protection, the land might have been alienated or encumbered in the meantime. That apprehension was not speculative.
The order of 2 April 2024 was ex parte, but it did not rest there. Patel was heard, and the High Court weighed rival submissions before continuing the protection on 14 August 2024. That hearing, the Court said, was a material consideration.
Section 96(3) binds parties, not strangers
The Court called Patel’s argument on Section 96(3) thoroughly misplaced and set out to clarify the law. It extracted Section 96(3) and Order XXIII Rules 3 and 3A, which bar an appeal from a consent decree and a suit to set aside a decree on the ground that the compromise was unlawful.
Read together, the bench said, the bar and the estoppel rest on the binding effect of the compromise between its parties. The scheme gives finality to lawful compromises and stops those who consented from resiling through collateral proceedings. It cannot be mechanically invoked against a non-party asserting an independent interest.
The Court revisited Banwari Lal v. Chando Devi, 1992 SCC OnLine SC 541, Pushpa Devi and R. Rajanna v. S.R. Venkataswamy, (2014) 15 SCC 471. Pushpa Devi’s statement that no appeal lies against a consent decree, it said, was made about the remedies of a party to the compromise.
Triloki Nath was distinguished. The appellant there had bought the property during the pendency of the suit that ended in the consent decree, traced his title through a party, and was bound by it. The Palkhiwala family traced nothing through any party and had no pending litigation with them.
“A stranger to a compromise decree cannot be said to be barred” (para 53)
The provisions, the Court held, are limited to the parties to the compromise and act as an estoppel only against them. A person who was neither a party to the suit nor to the compromise cannot be deemed to have consented merely because others did.
Non-party status does not, however, confer an unrestricted right of appeal. The stranger must prima facie show that the decree prejudicially affects his rights and must obtain leave under the settled principles. The fact that the decree is a consent decree neither adds a stricter test nor bars leave.
The Court summarised who may appeal under Section 96: a party adversely affected or his legal representative; a transferee of that party’s interest; and, with leave, a non-party who would be aggrieved or bound by the decree as res judicata under Explanation 6 to Section 11.
Whether a person is adversely affected, it added, is a question of fact in each case.
Who counts as an aggrieved person
For the test, the bench drew on the three-judge decision in V.N. Krishna Murthy v. Ravikumar, (2020) 9 SCC 501, and on H. Anjanappa v. A. Prabhakar, 2025 INSC 121, decided by a bench that included Justice Pardiwala. Anjanappa’s eight principles were extracted.
A stranger must satisfy the court that he is an aggrieved person whose right is affected by the decree. The expression excludes psychological or imaginary injury. Leave should not go to everyone remotely affected, but ordinarily should go to those who would be bound by the decree and precluded from attacking it elsewhere.
Applied here, the 1975 sale deed and Entry 3106 were undisputed; the parties differed on what followed. Mutation entries do not confer title, the Court said, but the family’s material could not be dismissed as disclosing an imaginary or remote interest.
The circumstances the Court weighed were the 2012 suit on a 1996 agreement, the decree lying unexecuted until 2020, the 2022 sale deed to Patel with the Society confirming, the power of attorney of 22 March 2012, and the non-appearance of the Society and the heirs.
None of this proved fraud, the bench said. Together, though, it showed the grievance was not so tenuous as to shut the family out at the threshold.
Leave was therefore rightly granted. The conclusion, the bench repeated, goes only to standing and the need for appellate scrutiny, not to the merits of the family’s title or the truth of the collusion allegations.
Eleven years counted from knowledge
On delay, the Court rejected the arithmetic approach. Counting from 29 April 2013 could not answer the question for people who were neither parties to the suit nor to the compromise. It would be wrong to assume they knew of the decree from the day it was passed.
The family said it learned of the altered revenue records around August 2023 and then took steps, including the RTI response of 21 March 2024. What mattered, the Court said, was that the record disclosed an explanation for the earlier silence and steps taken once information came.
The High Court therefore committed no error in condoning the delay. The condonation decides nothing on merits; it only lets those issues be examined in the appeal.
Order
Both appeals, Civil Appeal Nos. 14017-14018 of 2026, are dismissed. The ex parte ad interim injunction of 2 April 2024, as continued by the judgment of 14 August 2024, the grant of leave to appeal to respondents 1 to 9 and the condonation of delay all stand.
The Court requested the Gujarat High Court to take up the main appeal for final hearing and dispose of it within three months of 30 October 2026. The Registry is to forward a copy of the judgment to the High Court. Pending applications stand disposed of.