In Brief
A contractor assigned rights to work on an airport runway extension to others, who were subsequently unpaid. The assignees sought to execute an arbitral award in the contractor's favour, claiming assignment rights, but courts below rejected them on the ground that Order XXI Rule 16 of the Code of Civil Procedure required pre-decree assignment to be ineffective. The Supreme Court held that the 1976 amendment to Order XXI Rule 16 (adding an Explanation) expressly permits a transferee of property rights arising from a suit to apply for decree execution without separate assignment of the decree itself. The legislative intent was to avoid prolonged separate suits and clarify that Section 146 CPC allows pre-decree assignments of actionable claims. The Court set aside the judgment and remitted the matter to the executing court for substantive determination."
The lawyer headnote and full judgment text are available to registered users.