New Delhi: Stays, objections against final decree, repeated adjournments by lawyers, untraceable judgment debtors, non-cooperation by authorities to implement civil court decrees—these are some the reasons execution proceedings get delayed in various courts of the country.
As per a report given to the Supreme Court Thursday, Maharashtra has the most execution proceedings pending, with 3.10 lakh cases yet to be finalised. Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, assisting the bench as an amicus curiae, submitted the report to a bench led by Justice J. B. Pardiwala. It was prepared after analysing status reports received from 19 high courts.
The report points to over 7.95 lakh execution cases, which are older than six months, pending across jurisdictions. This means that despite having a final judgment in their favour, the decree holders are still struggling to get actual relief in the case.
Justice Pardiwala’s bench, also comprising Justice K. Vinod Chandran, is monitoring implementation of its March 2025 judgement aimed at ensuring expeditious disposal of execution proceedings.
Execution petitions are the final stage of civil litigation. Filed by the winning party (decree-holder), it is to compel the other party to carry out the court’s order, such as recovering money or taking possession of property. A decree-holder moves when the judgment-debtor (losing party) fails to comply with the decision.
Execution petitions are filed in trial courts under Order 21 of the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) to enforce judicial orders or judgments. It’s a process of giving effect to the court’s decree.
There are 106 rules under Order 21 that provide a detailed process to execute a civil court decree.
In October last year, highly disappointed with the staggering pendency in execution petitions, Justice Pardiwala’s bench had lamented about the systemic delay, observing that the indifference of the district judiciary to ensuring enforcement of judicial orders has rendered court decrees meaningless.
It observed that the inordinate delay in the decisions was despite earlier Supreme Court guidelines that fixed a six-month timeline to dispose execution petitions and mandated all high courts to develop a mechanism to decide execution petitions within six months.
Sankaranarayanan’s report reflects the central argument that pendency of execution petitions is a distinct crisis in the justice-delivery system.
The problem, however, is not attributable to one cause. A recurring set of reasons delay execution proceedings. It’s a combination of procedural, administrative, litigant-driven and judicial capacity problems.
Across jurisdictions, the same bottlenecks appear to be causing the delay. Nineteen high courts said the execution petitions did not proceed due to a stay by a higher court and also due to objections filed against them by judgment-debtors.
Service-related problems (service of notices and summons to the judgment debtor), non-appearance (of judgment debtor), adjournments by lawyers, and failure to execute warrants (against the judgment debtor) also add to the pendency.
Several high courts also referred to non-cooperation by civil or revenue authorities and some also blamed the decree holders for not taking active steps to process the execution proceedings.
After Maharashtra, Karnataka is the second state struggling to dispose of the execution proceedings. There are more than 1.2 lakh cases pending there, followed by Madras where 60,000 execution cases remain undecided.
As per the replies of the state, Orissa has the minimum of execution cases. It has around 11,900 petitions pending.
One particularly important observation in the report is that 19 high courts had consented to setting up District Execution Cells, but, according to the note, only Tripura has actually established such a cell. Manipur had proposed an alternate state/district execution mechanism.
Notably, the amicus’ report also places before the court three important judgments delivered by the Delhi High Court between 2019 and 2021. These decisions lay down a procedural model to follow in execution proceedings. They recognise the execution deserves special attention because delay deprives a successful decree-holder of the fruits of litigation.
The guidelines underlined in these decisions deal with early attachment of the judgment-debtor’s property, deposit of decreed amounts, asset and income affidavits.
While taking the amicus’ note on record, the top court Thursday observed that periodic collection of data from high courts would not by itself address the problem. It suggested establishment of a cell and a mechanism similar to the one under the Commercial Courts Rules to track execution proceedings in subordinate courts.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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