The Delhi High Court has pulled down an administrative roadblock that had quietly reshaped how money decree cases entered its doors. In a ruling delivered on January 30, the Court set aside a Registry directive that prevented execution petitions involving sums of ₹2 crore or less from being accepted for filing.
The message from the Bench was unambiguous: access to justice cannot be filtered out at the counter.
The disputed directive dated back to 2016, when the High Court’s pecuniary jurisdiction was expanded from ₹20 lakh to ₹2 crore. Interpreting that change broadly, the Registry had stopped accepting fresh execution petitions where the decretal amount fell below the new threshold, redirecting litigants to district courts instead.
That approach, the Court said, crossed a line.
The judges made it clear that no administrative order—approval or not—can impose a monetary gatekeeping rule at the filing stage. Whether a case should ultimately be entertained is a judicial question, not one to be decided before a petition even gets registered.
In firm terms, the Court emphasized that litigants cannot be denied entry to the justice system through internal instructions. Even objections relating to jurisdiction, it noted, do not justify refusing to accept a filing. At most, such concerns can be flagged and placed before a judge for determination.
The ruling carefully separated roles: the Registry handles procedure; the Court decides substance. If there is disagreement over whether a petition belongs before the High Court or a lower forum, that disagreement must travel to the judicial side for resolution.
Importantly, the Bench stopped short of ruling on where such execution petitions should finally be heard. That decision, it said, must be taken case by case by the judge assigned to the matter.
What the Court did do was remove the blanket restriction. The 2016 directive has been set aside to the extent it barred the Registry from accepting execution petitions tied to money decrees of ₹2 crore or less. The Registry may still raise jurisdictional objections—but it cannot shut the filing window.
In effect, the Court has reaffirmed a basic principle: the courthouse door cannot be closed by administrative fiat.
