Union government has approved the Specific Relief (Amendments) Bill 2017.
What is Specific relief bill about?
The Specific Relief (Amendment) Bill, 2017 was introduced in Lok Sabha by the Ministry of Law and Justice.
The Bill seeks to amend the Specific Relief Act, 1963 and sets out the remedies available to parties whose contractual or civil rights have been violated.
The Act sets out two main remedies to a party whose contract has not been performed
The party may ask the court to compel performance of the contract (specific performance); or
The party may seek monetary compensation instead of performance.
Under the Bill, certain civil courts may be designated as Special Courts by the state government, in consultation with the Chief Justice of a High Court and these courts will deal with cases related to infrastructure projects.
The Department of Economic Affairs is the nodal agency for specifying various categories of projects and infrastructure sub-sectors, which is provided as Schedule to the Bill.
The Department may amend the Schedule relating to any such category or sub-sectors.
What is the need for the bill?
The Specific Relief bill 1963 brought in enormous commercial activities in India including foreign direct investments, public private partnerships.
But the act is not in tune with the rapid economic growth of the country.
Government believes that with wider discretion of courts to grant specific performance and to make specific performance of contract will restricts economic growth.
Thus the new bill proposes to enable courts to engage experts on specific issues and to secure their attendance.
What are the salient features of the bill?
The Bill adds a new entity to the list of parties which includes a limited liability partnership (LLP) formed from the amalgamation of two existing LLPs, one of which may have entered into a contract before the amalgamation.
The Act provides circumstances in which injunctions cannot be given, for example, to stop a party from filing a complaint in a criminal matter.
The Bill additionally seeks to prevent courts from granting injunctions in contracts related to infrastructure projects, if such an injunction would hinder or delay the completion of the project.
The court will determine the terms of payment of such expert and the payment will be borne by both the parties.
