Origin of Specific Relief as Equitable Relief

You paid a builder a deposit for a flat in Kharghar. He sells it to someone else at a higher price. A court can tell him to pay you money for the loss. But you did not want money. You wanted that flat. Can a court order him to hand it over? For centuries the answer depended on which court you walked into, and that history is why this law is called equitable relief.

In two minutes

Specific relief is the court’s power to make a person actually do, hand over or stop doing the thing he owed, instead of merely paying damages; it grew out of equity, which filled the gap left by the common law’s money remedy, and the Specific Relief Act 1963 now gives it a statutory shape.

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