P&H HC Upholds Hearing Of Third-Party Dispossession Claims After Possession Under Decades-Old Mortgage Decree

The petitioner’s predecessor obtained a decree for redemption of mortgage in 1970, followed by a final decree in 1983.

After subsequent litigation, the petitioner’s second appeal was allowed in 2019, and the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge in 2021.

Possession was delivered to the petitioner on 24 December 2021.

Respondents 10 to 16 then filed third-party objections, claiming dispossession, and an application under Order XXI Rule 26 CPC.

After a Local Commissioner reported discrepancies in site dimensions, the Executing Court framed issues on 19 September 2022.

The petitioner challenged that order under Article 227 of the Constitution, contending that execution was complete and the objections were not maintainable or were time-barred; the respondents relied on Order XXI Rule 99 CPC.

Order XXI Rule 99 CPC permits a person other than the judgment-debtor who claims to have been dispossessed by the decree-holder to apply to the executing court.

Under Rule 101, that court must determine all relevant questions—including questions of right, title, or interest—and those questions are not to be decided by a separate suit.

Rule 100 provides for the order following that determination, and Rule 103 gives such an order the force and effect of a decree.

For a Rule 99 application, the cause of action arises upon the alleged dispossession.

The High Court exercised supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution.

The respondents claimed that they were dispossessed when possession was delivered to the decree-holder, bringing their objections within Rule 99.

The resulting questions concerning their claimed rights and entitlement to possession were therefore for the Executing Court to adjudicate under Rule 101, making the framing of issues neither illegal nor jurisdictionally infirm.

The age of the decree did not, by itself, render the objections time-barred because the relevant cause of action arose on the alleged dispossession.

Nor did dismissal of the earlier civil suit bar the objections: that suit had been dismissed on the technical ground that the issues should be determined by the Executing Court under Order XXI CPC.

Finding no basis for intervention under Article 227, it dismissed the revision petition.

It clarified that its observations did not determine the merits of the parties’ underlying claims.