From Discretion to Mandate: Seeking the Specific Performance of Repudiated Contracts

When faced with a repudiatory breach of contract, parties may either terminate the contract or seek its specific performance. The latter choice acquired newfound significance following the 2018 amendment to the Specific Relief Act, which marked a decisive shift away from treating specific performance as a discretionary remedy, establishing it instead as a rule. This paper examines how courts have grappled with this change. It reveals a doctrinal split between one line of jurisprudence, that continues to scrutinize claimants’ conduct and refuse to enforce contracts on a discretionary basis, and another that nominally embraces the new statutory framework, but carves out exceptions and grants compensatory remedies to defendants. While this paper argues that the latter approach falls short of securing contracting parties’ performance interest, it nonetheless represents a step towards the judicial adoption of the fundamental change in India’s contractual remedies framework.