Property Law · Specific Relief
Specific Performance After the 2018 Amendment — What Changed
For over a century specific performance was a remedy the court could refuse even to a blameless plaintiff. The Specific Relief (Amendment) Act, 2018 removed that discretion. If you are enforcing an agreement to sell, the change is substantial — and the date on your agreement decides whether it helps you at all.
The Core Change
From discretionary relief to the general rule
Under the unamended Act, a plaintiff could prove a valid contract, prove readiness and willingness, and still lose. Old Section 20 gave the court a general discretion to refuse specific performance, and Section 10 made the remedy available only where damages would not be adequate compensation. Enforcement was the exception; damages were the default.
The amendment inverted that. Substituted Section 10 provides that specific performance shall be enforced, subject only to the limits in Sections 11(2), 14 and 16. The general discretion in old Section 20 was removed altogether, and the section number reused for substituted performance. The adequacy-of-damages threshold in Section 14 went with it.
In practice this shifts where the argument happens. A defendant can no longer ask the court to decline relief on broad equitable grounds. The contest moves to whether the contract falls within a Section 14 exclusion, and to readiness and willingness under Section 16(c).
Read This First
The amendment is prospective — your contract date decides
This is the point that decides how a suit is argued, and it is routinely missed. The Supreme Court held in Katta Sujatha Reddy v. Siddamsetty Infra Projects (2022) that the 2018 amendment operates prospectively. It is substantive, not merely procedural, and does not reach back over contracts already made.
So a contract entered into before the amendment came into force on 1 October 2018 is governed by the old discretionary regime, even if the suit is filed today. A contract made after that date gets the benefit of the new Section 10.
The practical consequence: on an older agreement you must still plead and argue the equities as though nothing had changed, because for that contract nothing has. Establish the date of the agreement before anything else is drafted.
The New Remedy
Substituted performance under Section 20
The amendment gave the wronged party a self-help route. Where a contract is broken, they may have it performed by a third party or through their own agency, and recover the costs and expenses of doing so from the party in breach.
Two conditions govern it. First, the party must give written notice of not less than thirty days calling on the defaulter to perform; only if performance does not follow may substituted performance be obtained. Second, having actually obtained substituted performance, the party cannot then claim specific performance of the same contract — though the claim for damages survives.
That makes the election a genuine strategic decision rather than a formality. Going down the substituted route on a property agreement forecloses the remedy most buyers actually want, which is the property itself. For a construction or supply contract it is frequently the faster and more commercial answer. We take that decision before the notice is issued, not after.
The Limits
What Section 14 still excludes
Four categories remain outside specific performance: a contract where the party has already obtained substituted performance under Section 20; one whose performance involves a continuous duty the court cannot supervise; one so dependent on the personal qualifications of a party that the court cannot enforce its material terms; and one determinable in its nature.
The last of those does a great deal of work in commercial litigation. A contract terminable at will by either side is determinable, and courts have declined specific performance of such agreements. Whether a termination clause makes a contract determinable is fact-specific and heavily argued.
What is no longer a defence is that damages would compensate adequately. That ground disappeared with the amendment, and a defence built on it is arguing the old Act.
Infrastructure
Section 20A and the bar on injunctions
The amendment carved out infrastructure projects. Section 20A bars a court from granting an injunction in a suit concerning a contract relating to an infrastructure project specified in the Schedule, where the injunction would impede or delay the project's progress or completion. Section 41(ha) carries the same bar into the general injunction provisions.
Section 20B allows designation of Special Courts for such suits, and Section 20C sets an outer limit of twelve months for disposal, extendable by up to six. If your dispute touches a Scheduled infrastructure project, assume interim relief will be difficult and build the case around damages and substituted performance instead.
Unchanged
Readiness, willingness and limitation still decide most suits
Section 16(c) survived. A plaintiff who cannot show that they performed, or were always ready and willing to perform, the essential terms of the contract will not get specific performance under either regime. In our experience this — not the discretion the amendment removed — is what most suits actually turn on. It is proved by conduct: funds arranged and evidenced, notices calling for execution, attendance at the Sub-Registrar, replies to the seller's correspondence.
Limitation is equally unforgiving. Article 54 of the Limitation Act gives three years from the date fixed for performance, or where none is fixed, three years from notice of refusal. Where a buyer waited and negotiated rather than issuing a notice, establishing the date of refusal becomes the whole case.
For how these claims are run in practice, see our specific performance page, and contract disputes where the remedy sought is damages rather than the asset.
Questions
Frequently asked
- Specific performance stopped being discretionary. Before the amendment, Section 20 gave the court a broad discretion to refuse specific performance even where the contract was valid and the plaintiff was ready and willing. The amendment substituted Section 10 so that specific performance shall be enforced, subject to the limits in Sections 11(2), 14 and 16. The court's general equitable discretion to refuse relief was removed, and old Section 20 was replaced with the substituted performance provision.
- No. The Supreme Court held in Katta Sujatha Reddy v. Siddamsetty Infra Projects (2022) that the 2018 amendment is prospective, not retrospective. A contract entered into before the amendment came into force is governed by the earlier discretionary regime. The date of the agreement therefore decides which law your suit is argued under, and it is the first thing to establish.
- Where a contract is broken, the affected party may have it performed by a third party or by their own agency, and recover the costs and expenses from the party in breach. The right is conditional: written notice of not less than thirty days must first be given to the defaulting party calling on it to perform, and once substituted performance has actually been obtained the party cannot then also claim specific performance of the same contract. Damages remain available.
- Section 14 as substituted lists them: a contract where a party has obtained substituted performance under Section 20; a contract whose performance involves continuous duty the court cannot supervise; a contract so dependent on the personal qualifications of a party that the court cannot enforce its material terms; and a contract that is determinable in its nature. The old bar based on the adequacy of damages was removed, which matters: damages being adequate is no longer, by itself, a reason to refuse specific performance.
- It inserted Section 20A, which bars a court from granting an injunction in a suit relating to a contract for an infrastructure project specified in the Schedule where granting it would impede or delay the project's progress or completion. Section 41(ha) mirrors that bar. Section 20B provides for designation of Special Courts to try such suits, and Section 20C sets a twelve-month outer limit for disposal, extendable by up to six months.
- Yes. Section 16(c) survives the amendment: a plaintiff who fails to prove that they have performed, or have always been ready and willing to perform, the essential terms of the contract cannot obtain specific performance. What the amendment changed was the explanation to that section and the removal of the requirement to aver performance in a particular form. Readiness and willingness remain the ground on which most specific performance suits are actually lost.
- Article 54 of the Limitation Act: three years from the date fixed for performance, or, where no such date is fixed, three years from when the plaintiff has notice that performance is refused. Identifying which limb applies is often contested, because a contract with no fixed date shifts the starting point to the refusal, and proving when refusal occurred becomes a question of evidence.