Justice must not end with the verdict
The Supreme Court’s recent push to clear execution backlogs has shown that much can be achieved through existing judicial powers, without waiting for Parliament. But it has also exposed a deeper problem: unless courts can ensure timely compliance, justice may be delivered yet remain beyond the reach of those who have won it
A litigant who obtains a civil decree after spending ten or fifteen years in court often discovers that the real battle begins after judgment. The decree-holder may spend several more years merely trying to secure compliance with the very order that has conclusively recognised his rights. For many litigants, the verdict is not the end of litigation but an entry ticket to another queue.
India’s justice system is usually criticised for delays in adjudication. Equally serious, though far less discussed, is what may be called an enforcement deficit in civil justice. When final orders are routinely ignored, delayed or frustrated, subordinate courts and tribunals appear toothless - not because their decisions lack legal validity, but because they lack effective enforcement. The problem extends well beyond civil courts: Consumer Commissions, RERA Authorities, Labour Courts, Revenue Courts, Commercial Courts and numerous tribunals all see successful litigants forced into a second round of litigation just to realise the fruits of the first. The Supreme Court has repeatedly expressed concern over this state of affairs. In Rahul S. Shah v. Jinendra Kumar Gandhi, it directed that execution proceedings ordinarily be completed within six months, with reasons recorded for any extension. More recently, deciding a four-decade-old Tamil Nadu land dispute in Periyammal v. V. Rajamani, the Court went further. It directed every High Court to collect execution-pendency data from its district judiciary and issue an administrative circular requiring disposal within six months, with presiding officers held answerable for delay.
The results are instructive. In the six months after the March 2025 circular, 3,38,685 execution petitions were disposed of nationwide - yet pendency stood at a still-alarming 8,82,578 by October 2025, prompting the Court to extend the deadline by six months. A second wave followed and by April 2026, a total of 7,69,731 petitions had been cleared. But fresh filings kept arriving faster than courts could clear the backlog, and 7,95,981 petitions remained pending beyond six months when the matter was last reviewed. Karnataka’s High Court, which had failed to submit its data on time, was separately directed to devise its own disposal mechanism, and its executing courts were barred from allowing withdrawal-and-refiling without valid reason — a targeted fix imposed without any new legislation.
This is the clearest available demonstration that a great deal can be accomplished through existing supervisory and rule-making power, without waiting for Parliament. It is worth asking, though, why a circular producing three-quarters of a million disposals still leaves the backlog looking much as before. The likely answer is not that the mechanism failed, but that it addressed only half the problem. A time-bound circular pushes courts to dispose of petitions already filed, but does nothing to slow the rate at which judgment-debtors generate fresh obstruction to keep a petition alive past its deadline. Disposal speed and defiance are different problems — which is why the disclosure and contempt measures below matter as much as the timeline itself.
There is a second, more uncomfortable question the same episode raises — who enforces the enforcers? Karnataka’s High Court itself missed the Supreme Court’s own reporting deadline and had to be separately reminded before it complied. If administrative direction is the preferred route precisely because it moves faster than legislation, its speed still depends on High Courts choosing to comply with the Supreme Court the way judgment-debtors are meant to comply with executing courts. The honest answer is that this route trades one enforcement problem for a smaller, more visible one — a High Court answering to the Supreme Court is far easier to hold to account than a scattered judgment-debtor is to trace, but the dependency does not disappear, it simply moves up a level. The answer does not lie in bypassing the existing legal framework altogether. Sections 36 to 74 and Order XXI of the CPC already provide for elaborate execution machinery - attachment and sale of property, arrest and detention, appointment of receivers, delivery of possession. The difficulty is not the absence of legal provisions — it lies in prolonged delays and, in some cases, consequence-free defiance of lawful orders.
Other jurisdictions treat post-judgment compliance as seriously as adjudication itself: England and Wales compel asset disclosure and back it with contempt proceedings, while the United States’ Rule 69 permits post-judgment discovery in aid of execution. The lesson is not that India should transplant a foreign model, but that enforcement needs active disclosure and credible consequences - exactly what Periyammal’s circulars did not supply.
The temptation, at this point, is to reach for a new law - a Civil Justice Compliance Act codifying timelines, mandating disclosure and layering on graded sanctions. The instinct is sound, but a standalone central statute would need to clear a crowded legislative calendar and navigate the fact that execution touches both Union and State List subjects. The Commercial Courts Rules, 2021 offer a cautionary tale. Their Chapter XII, proposing dedicated District Execution Cells, has sat unnotified by the Union government for five years, despite being fully drafted. Faced with that inertia, the Supreme Court in May 2026 told High Courts to constitute such cells on their own under existing supervisory jurisdiction - the strongest case yet for treating rule-making as the default route, and new legislation as the fallback.
Three concrete steps follow.
First, generalise the Order XXI amendment that Periyammal has already begun. High Courts possess rule-making power under Section 122 CPC to supplement CPC procedure within their jurisdiction - though that power reaches procedure, not substantive rights, so it can fix timelines and disclosure duties but cannot itself create new categories of liability. Codifying the six-month benchmark, making asset disclosure mandatory rather than discretionary, and prescribing fixed compliance hearings at 90 and 180 days can be notified by individual High Courts, several of which already issue execution-specific circulars under Supreme Court supervision. Where uniformity is desirable, a focused CPC (Amendment) Bill limited to Order XXI is a far lighter lift than an entirely new statute.
Second, put real force behind disclosure and contempt tools that already exist. Order XXI Rule 41 already permits courts to examine judgment-debtors on their assets, but it is rarely invoked and carries weak consequences for non-compliance - making non-disclosure itself independently punishable would close much of the gap a new “mandatory disclosure” provision would otherwise address. Executing courts could similarly be empowered to certify deliberate, repeated defiance directly to the High Court for summary contempt — as Karnataka’s courts effectively were on withdrawal and re-filing.
Third, build transparency through technology. A national execution-tracking dashboard, integrated with the existing e-Courts platform, could make pendency visible in real time — a pure implementation project, built substantially on data the ongoing court-by-court reporting to the Supreme Court has already generated. None of this forecloses a more comprehensive statutory framework later. But sequencing does matter. Administrative circulars produced three-quarters of a million disposals in thirteen months, at a speed no new statute could have matched, even as they proved unable to outrun the rate of fresh filings. Rule amendments and Practice Directions can be tested and refined if they misfire - a central Act, once passed, is far harder to correct. The prudent path is to exhaust what existing rule-making power can deliver, and treat new legislation as the tool of last resort.
Whichever instrument closes the remaining gap, it must carry the same safeguards, viz., prior notice, hearing, speaking orders, proof of wilful default, protection for bona fide third-party claims, exclusion of genuine inability to comply, and appellate remedies. Graded consequences - realistic costs, compulsory disclosure, temporary civil disabilities, expedited attachment - should precede civil detention, which should remain an exceptional last resort. The goal is predictability, not punitive excess. A litigant who has already succeeded should not face another prolonged struggle to secure compliance, and those who deliberately frustrate final orders should not profit from delay. Justice delayed is damaging. Justice unenforced is worse. Thirteen months of Supreme Court-driven administrative circulars have already shown what is achievable without new legislation, and how much further there is to go. That experience, not a hypothetical statute, should now anchor the reform agenda.
It is worth recalling the circular trigger. Ayyavoo Udayar signed a sale agreement for a modest plot in Salem in 1980 and sued for possession in 1983. He won his decree in 1986 but did not live to see it enforced - he died while the vendors’ appeal was pending, and his legal heirs carried the case through a second appeal, a dismissed Supreme Court petition in 2006, and an execution petition resisted for years by relatives claiming tenancy rights they could never quite document. It took until March 2025 — forty-five years after the original agreement — for the Supreme Court to order his heirs into possession within two months, and to use his family’s case to order every High Court to prevent the same thing happening to anyone else. Faith in justice is tested not when a verdict is pronounced, but when it is obeyed - and for one family in Salem, that test lasted forty-five years too long.
India’s justice system is usually criticised for delays in adjudication. Equally serious, though far less discussed, is what may be called an enforcement deficit in civil justice
The writer is an ex-IAS officer and is presently Chairman, RERA Bihar. He served as Principal Secretary, Department of Revenue and Land Reforms, Bihar; Views presented are personal.
