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Showing contexts for: foreign decrees in Ashok Kumar Goel & Ors vs Bnp Paribas Suisse Sa & Ors on 24 December, 2025Matching Fragments
enjoins the executing Court to assume, for the purposes of S. 44-A and for other purposes connected with the execution of decrees, "that the District Court had actually passed the decree". As a natural and necessary corollary of the same, the principle of simultaneous execution, as applicable to domestic decrees, would also indiscriminately extend to foreign decrees, especially in light of the conspicuous absence of any bar to the contrary.
29. Additionally, in Oakwell Engineering Ltd., this Court reiterated that the right to apply for execution in any permissible mode should not be restricted unless explicitly barred by statute. Since Section 44A does not mandate prior execution in the cause country, the legislature intended to provide decree holders with two options: (1) execute the decree in the Court that passed it, or (2) execute it wholly or partly through a competent District Court in India. It may also be noted that legislative silences are often of great relevance in performing the exercise of statutory interpretation in Courts. In light of the express permissibility of simultaneous execution of domestic decrees, the legislature ought to have expressly prohibited the same for foreign decrees if such was the intent, especially when it created the legal fiction in favour of such decrees for the specific purpose of execution. In the absence of any such prohibition, it would be impermissible for the Court to curtail a crucial procedural right. It would not only be contrary to the principles of comity of Courts, which are meant to ensure that reciprocal decrees are duly enforced, but also to the basic principle of procedural interpretation, which requires the Court to infer in favour of permissibility of an act, when it is not explicitly made impermissible in the realm of procedure.
31. The deeming fiction in Section 44A(1) equates foreign decrees to domestic ones, suggesting that the same permissive approach applies. Moreover, M.V. Al Quamar clarifies that Section 44A grants an independent right to enforce foreign decrees in India, irrespective of proceedings in the cause country. The absence of any provision in Order 21 Rule 11(2), Clause (f) or elsewhere in the CPC, suggesting a bar to simultaneous execution further supports this position. As noted in Cholamandalam and as noted above, any restriction on a legal right must be clearly laid down by statute and cannot be inferred, especially when no other conclusion is possible from the provisions of the governing law.