Summary
The Supreme Court declined to restore a decree for specific performance obtained in a suit framed and valued as one for mandatory injunction. Payment of deficit court fee under Section 149 CPC did not justify bypassing the required change of relief. Independently, a notice and an affidavit recording attendance before the Sub-Registrar did not establish continuing readiness and willingness through an unexplained delay of nearly three years before suit.
Issues
- Whether payment of deficit court fee entitled the plaintiff to specific performance despite the form of the original suit.
- Whether the plaintiff’s conduct established continuing readiness and willingness.
Held
- Court-authorised payment of deficient court fee normally gives the document the same effect as if the fee had originally been paid. But the difficulty here concerned deliberately framing and valuing the relief as mandatory injunction rather than simply underpaying the fee on a specific-performance claim. (¶¶ 5, 6, 7, 8)
- The appropriate route to change that relief was an amendment, subject to limitation and the applicable principles on relation back. The Court would not allow the chosen shortcut to secure the discretionary relief, even though the High Court’s limitation approach after the fee order had attained finality might be faulty. (¶¶ 7, 8)
- The trial court had framed no readiness-and-willingness issue. The 1996 notice and Sub-Registrar affidavit did not establish continuous readiness through the unexplained delay until institution in October 1999. The plaintiff’s overall conduct disentitled him to discretionary specific performance under the law applied to this dispute. (¶¶ 9, 10)
Result
Special leave petition dismissed without costs; reversal of the trial court’s specific-performance decree left undisturbed.