Limitation Act India: Periods Every Litigant Should Know

The most expensive mistake in Indian civil litigation is waiting for a reply. A buyer stops paying, promises to settle, sends a part payment once, then goes quiet. Three years pass in follow up calls and unsent drafts of a legal notice, and the suit that would have been unanswerable is now barred.

The Limitation Act in India works on an unforgiving idea. Every civil remedy has a shelf life, the clock starts when the law says it starts and not when you decide to act, and once it runs out the court closes the door on its own. This piece sets out the periods that cover most disputes, when time begins to run, what pauses or restarts it, and the mistakes that account for most barred claims.

Section 3 does the work whether or not anyone argues it

Section 3 of the Limitation Act 1963 says a suit, appeal or application instituted after the prescribed period shall be dismissed, although limitation has not been set up as a defence. Limitation is not an objection the other side must remember to take. The court must satisfy itself the proceeding is in time, and a barred plaint can be rejected at the threshold under Order VII Rule 11(d) of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908.

The complement is that limitation ordinarily bars the remedy, not the right. A time barred debt is still a debt. It cannot be sued upon, but a fresh written promise to pay it can create a new obligation under Section 25(3) of the Indian Contract Act 1872. The one place where the right itself dies is Section 27, below.

The periods that cover most disputes

The Schedule has 137 Articles. A small group of them does almost all the work.

Claim	Period	Time runs from
Compensation for breach of contract (Article 55)	3 years	The date the contract is broken, or when a continuing breach ceases
Price of goods sold and delivered	3 years	Delivery, or expiry of the agreed credit period
Money lent	3 years	The date the loan was made
Specific performance (Article 54)	3 years	The date fixed for performance, or where none is fixed, when the plaintiff has notice of refusal
Declaration of title or status (Article 58)	3 years	When the right to sue first accrues
Cancellation of an instrument (Article 59)	3 years	When the facts entitling the plaintiff to relief first become known
Any suit with no specific Article (Article 113)	3 years	When the right to sue accrues
Possession of immovable property on title (Article 65)	12 years	When the defendant’s possession becomes adverse to the plaintiff
Money charged on immovable property (Article 62)	12 years	When the money sued for becomes due
Redemption of a mortgage (Article 61)	30 years	When the right to redeem accrues
Execution of a decree (Article 136)	12 years	When the decree becomes enforceable
Any application with no specific Article (Article 137)	3 years	When the right to apply accrues

The appellate and post-judgment periods matter as much:

• Appeal to a High Court from a decree of a subordinate court: 90 days (Article 116). To any other court, 30 days.
• Appeal from a decree of a High Court to the same court: 30 days (Article 117).
• Setting aside an ex parte decree: 30 days from the decree, or from knowledge of it where summons was not duly served (Article 123), and 30 days for a review of the judgment (Article 124).
• Substituting the legal representatives of a deceased party: 90 days (Article 120), and 60 days to set aside the abatement (Article 121).
• Setting aside a sale held in execution: 60 days from the date of sale (Article 127).

When time starts running is the real question

Fights about limitation are rarely about arithmetic. They are about the starting date, and pleadings are frequently drafted to move it.

For breach of contract, time runs from the breach, not from the last reminder you sent. For goods supplied on running account it depends on whether the dealings amount to a mutual, open and current account with reciprocal demands, in which case time runs from the close of the year in which the last item is entered. A one way supply ledger is not a mutual account, however many entries it has.

For specific performance, where the agreement fixes a date for performance, time runs from that date even if both sides went on negotiating. Where no date is fixed, it runs from the point the buyer has notice that performance is refused, which is why a clear written refusal helps a claimant more than ambiguous silence.

Three provisions shift the start:

• Section 17 postpones the start where the suit is based on the defendant’s fraud, where the right of action is concealed by fraud, or where relief is sought from a mistake. Time runs from when the plaintiff discovered it, or could with reasonable diligence have discovered it.
• Section 22 gives a fresh period at every moment a continuing breach of contract or a continuing tort continues. A continuing trespass is a live claim; a single act of demolition is not.
• Sections 6, 7 and 8 protect a person who is a minor or of unsound mind when the right accrues, allowing suit after the disability ceases, subject to the cap in Section 8 of three years.

What stops the clock, and what restarts it

Exclusions, which subtract time already spent

• Section 4: where the period expires on a day the court is closed, the proceeding may be filed on the day the court reopens.
• Section 12: the day from which the period runs is excluded, and for appeals and reviews the time requisite for obtaining a certified copy of the decree and judgment is excluded. That exclusion runs from the date the copy is applied for, so applying on the day judgment is delivered is worth days or weeks.
• Section 14: time spent prosecuting a proceeding in good faith in a court that lacks jurisdiction is excluded, provided it was on the same matter and pursued with due diligence.
• Section 15(2): where a statute requires notice before suit, such as the two month notice to the Government under Section 80 CPC, the notice period is excluded.
• Section 12A of the Commercial Courts Act 2015: time spent in pre-institution mediation is excluded, a point covered in our guide to what the Commercial Courts Act changes.

Condonation under Section 5, and its limit

Section 5 allows an appeal or application to be admitted late if the applicant shows sufficient cause for not filing in time. Courts read “sufficient cause” liberally where the delay is explained day by day and there is no negligence, and strictly where the explanation is a formula.

The limit is absolute and it is where most people go wrong: Section 5 does not apply to a suit. A plaint filed one day late cannot be saved by condonation, only by showing the period had not in fact expired.

Acknowledgement under Section 18 and part payment under Section 19

These two matter more to a creditor than anything else in the Act.

Under Section 18, an acknowledgement of liability in writing, signed by the party or his agent and made before the period expires, starts a fresh period from the date of the acknowledgement. It need not admit a precise amount or promise to pay; it needs to admit a subsisting jural relationship. A signed confirmation of accounts, a letter asking for time, an email admitting the outstanding, and an entry in a company’s audited balance sheet have all been held capable of amounting to acknowledgement. Two conditions are strict: it must be in writing and signed, and made while the claim is still alive. An acknowledgement after the period has run revives nothing.

Under Section 19, part payment made before the period expires by the person liable gives a fresh period from the date of payment. The proviso requires that an acknowledgement of the payment appears in the handwriting of, or in a writing signed by, the person paying. A bank transfer with no accompanying writing is weaker evidence than creditors assume, so ask for a signed acknowledgement whenever a part payment is accepted.

Section 21 adds a caution for anyone amending a plaint. A party added later is treated as sued only from the date he was added, so a defendant brought in three years on may plead limitation though the original filing was in time.

Special statutes carry their own clocks

Section 29(2) provides that where a special or local law prescribes a different period, that period prevails. Some that come up regularly:

• Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996, Section 34(3): three months from receipt of the award to apply to set it aside, extendable by 30 days on sufficient cause and, in the words of the section, “not thereafter”. No general power saves an application filed on day 95.
• Negotiable Instruments Act 1881: a cheque bounce complaint runs on a chain of short periods: a written demand within 30 days of the return memo, 15 days for the drawer to pay, then one month to file under Section 142.
• Consumer Protection Act 2019, Section 69: two years from the cause of action, with power to condone delay for sufficient cause recorded in writing.
• Section 468 of the Criminal Procedure Code, now carried into the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023: a bar on taking cognizance of lesser offences after six months, one year or three years, depending on the punishment prescribed.

Section 27, where the right itself dies

Section 27 is the exception to the rule that limitation bars only the remedy. At the determination of the period limited for a suit for possession of property, the right to that property is extinguished. This is the statutory foundation of adverse possession. A landowner who allows another to remain in open, continuous and hostile possession for twelve years does not merely lose the right to sue. He loses the property. The possession must be to the knowledge of the true owner and adverse to his title throughout, and permissive occupation never ripens into title.

That is why a prudent buyer looks at possession on the ground as carefully as at the chain of documents, a point we return to in our real estate and property practice.

Where claims are usually lost

• Treating settlement talks as though they stop the clock. They do not, unless someone signs an acknowledgement.
• Treating a legal notice as the filing. Apart from the statutory notice periods that Section 15(2) excludes, it buys no time.
• Applying late for the certified copy after judgment, and losing the Section 12 exclusion that would have saved the appeal.
• Assuming a decree can wait. Twelve years under Article 136 is long, but assets do not wait, as set out in our note on execution of a decree.

If a date is close, file and sort out the rest afterwards. A defective plaint can be amended. A barred plaint usually cannot be rescued.

This is general information on the Limitation Act in India, not legal advice on any specific claim, and the starting date in your matter depends on documents only a reading of the file will settle. Our litigation and arbitration practice covers this work, and you can put your dates to us through the contact page.