The Supreme Court of India, in a significant judgment, has ruled that a suit for specific performance of an agreement to sell (ATS) is maintainable even without a specific prayer to declare the unilateral termination of the agreement as invalid, particularly when the contract is not “in its nature determinable”.

Delivering the judgment in K.S. Manjunath and Others v. Moorasavirappa Muttanna Chennappa Batil (D) by LRs and Others , a bench of J ustice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice R. Mahadevan dismissed the appeals filed by subsequent purchasers of a property. The court upheld the High Court’s decree for specific performance in favour of the original vendees, holding that the subsequent purchasers, who had notice of the prior agreement, could not be classified as “bona fide purchasers” und

See Full Page