Prem Lata Agarwal v Lakshman Prasad Gupta

• The first respondent obtained a money decree in 1938 against the appellant's branch of a joint family and began execution at Allahabad in 1941.
• Orders of the Allahabad High Court in a pending partition appeal were understood in 1941 and 1942 by the executing court as staying the execution. The High Court passed the final partition decree in December 1949 but did not then discharge the Receivers.
• Execution was revived in May 1950; a mill was attached and sold, but the sale was set aside in 1955 when the judgment-debtors sought relief under the U.P. Encumbered Estates Act 1934.
• The decree was transferred to the Madras High Court, where an execution application was filed on 13 August 1956. The Madras High Court held it in time.

1. Was the 1956 execution application barred by limitation?

• Under S.15 of the Limitation Act, the time during which an injunction or order staying execution continues is excluded. "Prescribed" covers limitation prescribed by general statutes such as the CPC, not only the Limitation Act.
• An execution application must first satisfy Art.182 of the Limitation Act 1908; S.48 CPC, as it then stood, fixed 12 years as an outer limit but did not prescribe the period for each application.
• On the facts the stay was unqualified, so the decree-holder could not have executed against other property earlier. The appellant was also barred by res judicata from reopening limitation as to the 1950 order.
• The decree-holder was entitled to exclude the period of stay from 1941 to the end of 1949, and the 1956 application was in time.
• Result: appeal dismissed.

The period during which execution is stayed by an order of a court is excluded under S.15 of the Limitation Act in computing limitation for execution, including limitation under the CPC.