Non-compliance with a Lok Adalat award must be pursued through execution, not writ proceedings.

The appellant and respondents 4 to 16 were litigating over shares in properties in O.S.No.103 of 2012.

Pursuant to a settlement and Memorandum of Understanding, the parties placed their arrangement before the Taluk Legal Services Authority, which passed a Lok Adalat award dated 09.09.2023 determining their respective shares.

The appellant allegedly failed to cooperate with the survey and execution of the partition deed.

The private respondents thereafter executed a partition deed among themselves, while setting apart the appellant’s share.

When registration was refused, the respondents challenged the refusal in W.P.No.11546 of 2025.

The writ Court set aside the refusal and directed the Sub-Registrar to entertain the document, following which the partition deed dated 07.04.2025 was registered.

The appellant then filed W.P.No.30378 of 2025 challenging both the Lok Adalat award and the consequential partition deed.

The Single Judge rejected the challenge and relegated the appellant to pursue execution of the award. The present intra-court appeal challenged that order.

Whether a writ petition challenging a Lok Adalat award is maintainable in the absence of allegations of fraud, misrepresentation, or collusion

Whether an alleged failure to comply with the terms of a Lok Adalat award can be challenged by writ proceedings, or must be pursued before the appropriate Execution Court

Whether the learned Single Judge erred in relegating the appellant to execution proceedings instead of entertaining the challenge to the award and partition deed

The Court applied the principle that a Lok Adalat award, once passed on the basis of the parties’ settlement, assumes the character of a decree and is enforceable through execution proceedings.

A writ petition against such an award may be entertained only on limited grounds, including fraud, misrepresentation, or collusion.

The Court also considered the principle referred to in Dilip Mehta v. Rakesh Gupta, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 2737, concerning the limited maintainability of a writ challenge to a Lok Adalat award.

Where the complaint concerns non-compliance with the terms of the award rather than a legally sustainable challenge to its validity, the aggrieved party must seek enforcement before the competent Execution Court.

The appellant did not allege that the Lok Adalat award had been procured through fraud, misrepresentation, or collusion.

His grievance was essentially that the award had not been implemented in the manner contemplated by the parties, particularly because the partition deed was executed without his cooperation and his share was merely set apart.

Since the award embodied the parties’ settlement and possessed the character of a decree, any dispute regarding its implementation or alleged non-compliance was required to be addressed through execution proceedings rather than by invoking writ jurisdiction.

The Court therefore found no error in the Single Judge’s decision to decline the writ challenge and relegate the appellant to the appropriate Execution Court.

The alleged non-compliance with the award had to be pursued through execution proceedings.

The writ appeal was dismissed, the order of the learned Single Judge was affirmed, and the appellant was left free to work out his remedy in accordance with law.

No order as to costs was made.