Execution petition pendency: A decree without relief

On 25 May, the Supreme Court proposed the establishment of dedicated District Execution Cells after expressing concern over mounting delays in enforcement of court decrees. A Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Pankaj Mithal directed Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati to take instructions from the Ministry of Law and Justice and explain why the draft Commercial Courts Rules, 2021 have not been notified in five years.

The Bench went further. It said that High Courts may independently constitute the cells under its supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227, if the Union is disinclined to notify the rules. The views of all High Courts have been sought. The matter is listed next on 19 August.

Chapter XII of the draft rules, titled “Execution of Decree and Establishment of District Execution Cells”, proposes a specialised multidisciplinary body in each district, functioning under the Nyaya Mitra Scheme and the administrative control of the Principal District Judge. Under Rule 51, each cell would comprise a retired judicial officer or Class-I government officer as Member Secretary; a serving bank officer of at least Manager rank to trace accounts and liquid assets (Member Banking); a revenue officer of at least Tehsildar rank to locate immovable property (Member Revenue); and a police officer of at least Inspector rank to assist in attachment, possession, and sale (Member Police). Rule 47 requires the court researcher to prepare an execution memorandum the moment a decree is passed. Rule 48 mandates the court to proceed with execution suo moto once the limitation period for appeal expires.

The 25 May order came six weeks after the same Bench reviewed execution-pendency data from all 25 High Courts and called the situation “very frightening and disappointing”. On 10 April, the Bench recorded that 7,95,981 execution petitions older than six months remain pending across the country, despite the disposal of 7,69,731 such petitions since the Court’s judgement in Periyammal (Dead) Thr. LRs v. V. Rajamani (2025). What follows is an account of that judgement, the monitoring that ensued, and the data it has uncovered.

A Salem Land Deal Gone Wrong — For Forty Years

The execution crisis was brought to the Court’s attention in a land transaction case that began in Tamil Nadu in 1980. The vendors in a sale agreement refused to execute a sale deed after one Ayyavoo Udayar paid an earnest money of Rs. 10,000 in the purchase of an agricultural property in Salem valued at Rs. 67,000. Udayar filed a suit before the Subordinate Judge, Salem, seeking specific performance.

The trial court decreed the suit in Udayar’s favour on 2 April 1986. The vendors appealed. A single judge of the Madras High Court partly modified the decree. A Division Bench of the High Court dismissed the second appeal on 19 March 2004, subject to deposit of a further Rs. 67,000, which the appellants duly paid on 19 April 2004. The vendors took the matter to the Supreme Court; their special leave petition was dismissed on 20 January 2006. Their review petition was dismissed on 18 April 2006.

At this point, the decree was final and unappealable. Udayar had been litigating for over two decades. His legal representatives continued the litigation after his death. They filed an execution petition seeking delivery of possession. A new round of litigation began after the nephews of the vendors filed objections under Section 47 of the CPC, claiming to be cultivating tenants protected under the Tamil Nadu Cultivating Tenants’ Protection Act, 1955. They had not contested the original suit. Their tenancy registration, the Supreme Court later found, was obtained only in 2008—two years after the review petition was dismissed—based on a ‘no objection’ from the vendors who no longer held the title.The executing court allowed their application. The High Court upheld it.

The legal representatives of Udayar approached the Supreme Court.

The judgement of 6 March 2025: Law and a larger concern

On 6 March 2025, a bench of Justices Pardiwala and Mithal allowed the appeals and set aside the High Court’s orders. They directed the executing court to deliver vacant and peaceful possession of the property to the appellants within two months.

It further held that the respondents’ claims of tenancy, raised belatedly after decades of silence, were collusive—a device to frustrate the decree.

Justice Pardiwala’s judgement went further than the immediate facts. He opened with a quotation from Shreenath v Rajesh (1998), lamenting that the woes of a litigant often begin only after a decree is obtained. He issued directions to all High Courts in India to monitor and expedite pending execution petitions. The judgement mandated that execution proceedings be decided within six months.

The Monitoring Orders: March, October, and November 2025

The Court stated that it will retain the matter for compliance monitoring. The first compliance hearing took place on the day of the judgement: the Registry was directed to collect data from all High Courts on the pendency and disposal of execution petitions.

By the order dated 16 October 2025, the Court recorded that 3,38,685 execution petitions had been decided and disposed of nationwide in the six months since the main judgement. Pendency still stood at an alarming high at 8,82,578. The Registrar General of the Karnataka High Court was called upon to explain the delay in furnishing its data.

In its November 2025 Order, the Court noted that Karnataka’s total pendency, as on 28 February 2025, stood at 1,51,278 execution petitions. In six months, 41,221 had been disposed of, leaving a “very alarming” 1,41,814 petitions still pending. The next date was fixed for 10 April 2026.

The Hearing of 10 April 2026: Data, Directions, and Doubt

The consolidated picture, recorded on 10 April 2026, was sobering. In total, from the date of the main judgement on 6 March 2025 to 10 April 2026, 7,69,731 execution petitions had been decided and disposed of. Between 16 October 2025 and 10 April 2026 alone, 4,31,046 were disposed of. Despite the clearance, the figure for cases older than six months stood at 7,95,981.

The Court described the position as “very frightening and disappointing”. While there was progress on disposal, fresh filings continued to arrive. The backlog was not cleared.

The Bench then addressed the four states with the heaviest concentrations of stayed matters. 

1. In Maharashtra, of 3,95,960 pending execution petitions, 11,966 had been stayed by superior courts. 
2. In Uttar Pradesh, of 26,943 pending, 3057 were stayed. 
3. In Madhya Pradesh, of 50,579 pending, 2537 were stayed. 
4. In West Bengal, of 28,192 pending, 1008 were stayed. 

The bench asked the Chief Justices of the Allahabad, Bombay, Calcutta and Madhya Pradesh High Courts personally to look into the stayed matters and expedite their hearing.

In its October 2025 order, the Court had directed each High Court to evolve a mechanism and guide its district judiciary for speedy disposal. In April 2026, the Court doubted whether any such mechanism had been evolved at all. It directed each High Court to report by 7 October 2026 on the mechanism it has put in place and the directions it has issued to its district judiciary.

What the data reveals

The chart below maps state-wise pendency as reported to the Court. Each bar carries its reference date, which varies by jurisdiction — a reminder that the data is not strictly contemporaneous across states. Three High Courts (Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Manipur) submitted figures from an earlier, undated report. 

Chart: State-wise execution petition pendency as reported to the Supreme Court. Reference dates vary by jurisdiction (shown in parentheses). Source: Order dated 10 April 2026. Compiled by Supreme Court Observer.

Four jurisdictions account for the largest share of the burden. Bombay tops the list with 3,95,960 pending petitions as on 16 October 2025. 3,10,451 are older than six months. 

Karnataka reports 1,35,408 pending as on 30 September 2025; 1,18,108 of these are older than six months — roughly 87 per cent, pointing to near-total stagnation in the older docket. 

Madras stands at 78,934 (as on 30 September 2025) and Kerala at 73,002 (as on 6 March 2025). 

The fresh-filing columns (as seen in the consolidated table below) reveal that new petitions continue to arrive in large numbers: Bombay alone recorded 76,019 fresh filings; Punjab and Haryana combined recorded 51,900 across its three sub-jurisdictions.

The stayed-matters column exposes a specific dysfunction. When a superior court—whether the High Court or the Supreme Court—grants a stay of execution proceedings, the decree-holder is left in limbo indefinitely. These stays sometimes operate for years without review. The Court’s direction to the four Chief Justices is an attempt to bring those frozen matters back into motion.

What lies ahead

The execution crisis is not new. Earlier benches, in Rahul S. Shah and Salem Advocate Bar Association v Union of India (2005), exhorted speed without prescribing structure. 

The Periyammal monitoring has gone further than both. It has moved through three phases: data collection (March to October 2025), accountability through reporting (April 2026) and now institutional design (May 2026). If adopted, the District Execution Cell would be the first standing body in India’s civil justice system dedicated to shepherding decrees from paper to performance.

Three deadlines now govern the matter. By 7 October, each High Court must report on the mechanism it has evolved for speedy disposal. By 19 August, the Union government must explain the status of the draft Commercial Courts Rules and the reasons for the five-year delay in notification. And every High Court has been asked its views on constituting District Execution Cells under Article 227, should the Centre decline to act. The August hearing will reveal whether the executive branch treats the draft rules as a live instrument or an administrative relic.

For the seven-lakh-odd decree-holders still waiting, what began as a Tamil Nadu land dispute has become the most ambitious attempt to reform the weakest link in India’s civil justice system. The question is no longer whether the judiciary acknowledges the crisis. It is whether the apparatus will finally match the promise.

Full consolidated table from the 10 April 2026 order

Source: Consolidated data in the 10 April 2026 order, paragraph 1. Columns 1-2 show pendency as on 16 October 2025, split by 0-6 months old and more than six months old. Columns 3-4 show disposal after 16 October 2025, split by whether the matter was decided within or beyond six months of institution. Columns 5-6 show current pendency per the High Court reports. Blank cells reflect the order’s own non-disaggregation. Where the cut-off date differs from 16 October 2025, it is noted against the High Court’s name.