Continuing Breach and Continuing Wrong (Section 22) →

Section 22 of the Limitation Act, 1963 answers a deceptively simple question: when the wrong complained of is one that goes on and on, when does the limitation clock start? Its answer is that a fresh period of limitation begins to run at every moment of the time during which a continuing breach of contract or a continuing tort subsists. The provision prescribes no period of its own; it controls the starting point. The whole of the doctrine turns on a single, much-litigated distinction — between a wrong that is genuinely continuing and a wrong that is complete but whose injurious effects linger. This chapter sets out the statutory text, the rationale of a fresh cause of action de die in diem, the governing test laid down in Balkrishna Savalram Pujari and restated by the Constitution Bench in M. Siddiq, and the leading categories of continuing wrong — trade-mark infringement, encroachment on rights of way, and continuing breaches of contract.

Statutory text and place in the scheme

Section 22 of the Limitation Act, 1963 is one of the shortest provisions in the Act, yet it carries a disproportionate doctrinal weight. It sits in Part III of the Act, the part dealing with the computation of the period of limitation, alongside the cognate provision on suits for compensation for acts not actionable without special damage. Unlike the Articles in the Schedule, Section 22 prescribes no period of its own. What it does is govern the starting point from which the period fixed by the relevant Article is reckoned. Where the wrong complained of is of a continuing character, the section directs that a fresh period of limitation springs into existence at every moment during which the breach or tort persists.

The provision is the lineal successor of Section 23 of the Limitation Act, 1908, which was framed in identical terms. The renumbering in 1963 did not alter the substance, and the entire body of case law decided under the 1908 Act — including the seminal decision in Balkrishna Savalram Pujari v. Shree Dnyaneshwar Maharaj Sansthan — continues to govern the construction of Section 22. The principle it embodies is captured by the maxim de die in diem: the wrong recurs from day to day, and with each recurrence a fresh cause of action accrues. To place the section in its wider setting, see our introduction to the Limitation Act and the chapter on the general bar of limitation under Section 3.

The rationale: a fresh cause of action de die in diem

The justification for Section 22 lies in the nature of the wrong it addresses. The general scheme of the Limitation Act, explained in our chapter on the computation of the period of limitation, fixes a single starting point — the date on which the cause of action accrues — and runs the clock from there. That model works perfectly for a wrong that is complete in a single moment: a one-off trespass, a single conversion of goods, a refusal to perform on a fixed date. But a continuing wrong does not fit that model. By definition it has no single moment of completion; it is being committed afresh on every day that it endures.

If the ordinary single-starting-point rule were applied to such a wrong, the plaintiff would be barred for the entire wrong the moment three years (or whatever the Article prescribes) had elapsed from the first day of the breach — even though the defendant is, on the very day of suit, still committing the wrong. That result would be absurd: it would confer on a continuing wrongdoer a vested right to persist in the wrong, immune from suit, merely because the wrong is an old one. Section 22 prevents this by treating each day of continuance as generating its own fresh cause of action, so that the limitation clock is perpetually reset for the breach that subsists up to the date of the plaint.

It is important to grasp what the section does and does not give the plaintiff. It does not revive a cause of action that has wholly expired, nor does it give compensation for the entire history of the wrong without limit. It gives a subsisting cause of action for the wrong that continues; relief for the antecedent period is governed by the relevant Article read together with the section. The plaintiff is, in effect, never out of time so long as the wrong is alive — but the quantum and reach of the relief may be confined to the period that the Article permits.

The section thus sits comfortably within the broader philosophy of the law of limitation. The object of the Limitation Act, as the courts have repeatedly emphasised, is not to defeat just claims but to compel diligence and to put an end to stale demands. A continuing wrong is, by its very nature, never stale: the grievance is fresh every day, because the injury is being inflicted afresh every day. There is no question of the plaintiff sleeping over his rights while the wrong endures, and so the policy that underlies the bar of limitation simply does not bite. Section 22 is, in this sense, an application of principle rather than an exception to it — it withholds the bar precisely where the rationale for the bar is absent.

The central distinction: continuing wrong versus continuing injury

The single most heavily tested idea in this topic is the distinction between a wrong that is continuing and a wrong that is complete but whose injurious effects continue. The two are easily confused, and the confusion is fatal, because Section 22 applies only to the former. The locus classicus is Balkrishna Savalram Pujari v. Shree Dnyaneshwar Maharaj Sansthan, AIR 1959 SC 798, where Gajendragadkar J., speaking for the Court, drew the line with precision.

The Court held that it is the very essence of a continuing wrong that it is an act which creates a continuing source of injury and renders the doer of the act responsible and liable for the continuance of the said injury. If the wrongful act causes an injury which is complete, there is no continuing wrong even though the damage resulting from the act may itself continue. The crucial enquiry, therefore, is whether the source of the injury subsists, not whether its consequences are still being felt. A wrong that is over and done with, leaving lasting damage in its wake, is not a continuing wrong; a wrong whose engine is still running is.

Applying that test, the Supreme Court held that the wrongful ouster of the hereditary worshippers (the Guravs) by the trustees was not a continuing wrong. The act of dispossession was complete once and for all on the day it occurred; what continued thereafter was merely the effect of that completed wrong — the worshippers remained out of possession. Because the source of the injury (the act of ouster) was a single completed act, Section 23 of the 1908 Act (now Section 22) could not be invoked to keep the limitation clock perpetually open. The suit was accordingly governed by the ordinary Article and was found to be barred. The case is the textbook illustration of a completed wrong masquerading as a continuing one.

A simple diagnostic follows from Balkrishna. Ask whether, if the defendant did nothing further from today onwards, the wrong would nevertheless persist. If the wrong would simply stop the moment the defendant ceased acting — as with an ongoing obstruction that could be removed, or an infringing use that could be discontinued — the wrong is continuing, because its persistence depends on the defendant's continuing conduct or maintenance of an unlawful state of affairs. If, on the other hand, the wrong is already spent and only its consequences remain — as with a completed dispossession or a single demolition — then nothing the defendant does or fails to do tomorrow adds to the wrong, and Section 22 has no application. The enquiry is functional, not formal: it looks to whether the wrongful conduct is still in operation.

The modern restatement: M. Siddiq and Samruddhi

The Balkrishna test has been reaffirmed at the highest level in recent years. In M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs. v. Mahant Suresh Das, (2020) 1 SCC 1 — the Ayodhya / Ram Janmabhoomi Constitution Bench — the Court examined the earlier authorities and observed that what makes a wrong a wrong of a continuing nature is the breach of a duty which has not ceased but which continues to subsist. A continuing wrong arises, the Court explained, where there is an obligation imposed by law, by agreement or otherwise to continue to act or to desist from acting in a particular manner, and that obligation is being breached from day to day. The mere fact that the effect of the injury caused has continued is not sufficient to constitute a continuing wrong.

The principle was applied in the consumer context in Samruddhi Co-operative Housing Society Ltd. v. Mumbai Mahalaxmi Construction Pvt. Ltd., (2022) which arose under the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act. The builder's persistent failure to obtain and furnish the occupancy certificate, in breach of a continuing statutory obligation, was held to be a continuing wrong; the consumer complaint was therefore not barred by limitation, because the breach subsisted so long as the certificate was withheld. The decision is a useful modern example of the difference between a single completed default and a duty whose breach is ongoing.

For the student, the lesson from M. Siddiq and Samruddhi is that the enquiry is always duty-focused. Ask: was there a continuing obligation on the defendant to do something, or to refrain from something? If yes, and the obligation is still being breached, the wrong is continuing and Section 22 applies. If the duty was discharged or extinguished by a single completed act, the wrong is complete, and no amount of lingering damage will bring Section 22 into play.

Continuing tort: trade-mark infringement and passing off

The clearest category of continuing tort in the reported decisions is the infringement of intellectual property. In Bengal Waterproof Ltd. v. Bombay Waterproof Mfg. Co., AIR 1997 SC 1398 — the well-known Duck Back case — the Supreme Court held that infringement of a registered trade mark, and the act of passing off, are continuing wrongs. Every time the defendant uses the offending mark or passes off its goods as those of the plaintiff, a fresh act of deceit is committed and a fresh cause of action accrues to the plaintiff.

The practical consequence in Bengal Waterproof was significant. The plaintiff had brought an earlier suit and, on poor legal advice, had failed to claim all the reliefs to which it was entitled; that suit had been dismissed. The defendant argued that the dismissal operated as a permanent licence to continue infringing. The Supreme Court firmly rejected this. Because each act of infringement and passing off is an independent recurring wrong, a fresh suit for the continuing acts committed after the first suit was perfectly maintainable and was not barred either by limitation or by the principle of res judicata. To hold otherwise, the Court said, would be to reward the infringer for the plaintiff's earlier procedural lapse and would defeat the very purpose of trade-mark protection.

The reasoning generalises to other recurring torts. A nuisance that is repeated or maintained, a continuing pollution of water, an ongoing obstruction — each is a continuing tort so long as the offending state of affairs is being maintained. The unifying thread is that the defendant is, on each successive day, doing the very thing the law forbids, and is therefore liable afresh on each such day.

Continuing tort: encroachment and rights of way

A second well-settled category concerns encroachments and the obstruction of easements. In Sankar Dastidar v. Banjula Dastidar, (2006) 13 SCC 470, the Supreme Court considered the obstruction of a right of way and held that where a right of way — whether public or private — is claimed over land over which the wrongdoer has no right of possession, the breach is a continuing one to which Section 22 applies. The obstruction is not a single completed wrong; it is a state of affairs maintained from day to day, and the plaintiff's cause of action renews with each day the obstruction stands.

The principle was applied to a public street in Hari Ram v. Jyoti Prasad, (2011) 2 SCC 682. The defendant had narrowed a ten-foot public street in the village by an unauthorised construction. The Supreme Court held that the encroachment on the public way was a continuing wrong; so long as the construction obstructed the street, the wrong subsisted, and the suit to remove it could not be defeated on the ground of limitation. The appeal was dismissed and the decrees for removal of the encroachment confirmed.

These cases illustrate an important corollary. Where the defendant has no lawful right to possession of the land or to maintain the obstruction, the obstruction is a recurring trespass and the limitation clock never finally closes. The position is different where the defendant's possession has itself ripened into a right — for instance, where adverse possession has perfected title under Section 27, a matter taken up in the chapters on extinguishment of the right to property. Once the wrongdoer acquires a right to be where he is, the wrong ceases to be a wrong, and Section 22 has nothing to operate upon.

Continuing breach of contract

Section 22 applies to a continuing breach of contract as well as to a continuing tort, but the contractual limb requires care. The section is attracted only where the contract imposes an obligation of a continuing nature and that obligation is being broken from day to day. A useful illustration is Sunil Krishna Ghosh v. Calcutta Improvement Trust, AIR 2001 Cal 199. There the plaintiff had performed his part of the contract, but the defendant had neither executed the conveyance nor handed over physical possession, and no date had been stipulated for performance. The Calcutta High Court held that the defendant's failure to deliver possession was a continuing breach: on each and every day the breach was being committed afresh, and the suit was therefore not barred by limitation. The Court held that both Article 55 and Section 22 of the Limitation Act were engaged on those facts.

The decision must be read alongside the principle, settled in the line of cases on Article 54 such as Ahmadsahab Abdul Mulla v. Bibijan and Madina Begam v. Shiv Murti Prasad Pandey, that where a fixed date for performance is stipulated, non-compliance on that date gives a single, complete cause of action and time runs from that date. In such a case there is no continuing breach — the failure is complete on the fixed day. It is only where there is no fixed date, and the duty to perform subsists and is broken from day to day, that the breach takes on a continuing character and Section 22 is attracted.

The contractual application of Section 22 therefore depends entirely on the construction of the obligation. Some contractual duties are inherently continuous — an undertaking to maintain, to keep in repair, to refrain from competing, or to permit continued enjoyment of a right — and the failure to honour them is a breach that persists for as long as the default lasts. Other duties are discharged by a single act of performance at a fixed moment, and their breach is correspondingly complete in an instant. The pleader who wishes to invoke Section 22 must therefore identify, in the terms of the contract, an obligation of the first kind; it is not enough to point to a loss that has gone on for years. The court will look to the substance of the promise, not to the duration of the plaintiff's disappointment.

Continuing wrong and successive breaches distinguished

A trap that catches careless candidates is the confusion between a continuing breach and a series of successive breaches. They are not the same, and Section 22 operates only on the former. A continuing breach is a single, indivisible duty that is being broken without interruption over a span of time — one wrong, prolonged. Successive breaches are a series of separate, self-contained breaches, each complete in itself, each giving rise to its own independent cause of action with its own limitation period.

The point matters because the remedies diverge. For a continuing breach, Section 22 keeps the cause of action alive so long as the breach subsists, and the plaintiff is never out of time for the continuance. For successive breaches, by contrast, the plaintiff must sue within the limitation period reckoned from each separate breach; the earlier breaches may well be time-barred while the later ones are not. Section 22 cannot be invoked to fuse a string of separate completed defaults into a single rolling cause of action. The provision speaks, in terms, of a continuing breach of contract and not of a successive breach of contract.

The way to tell them apart is to ask whether the obligation is one and continuous, or whether the contract contemplates a series of discrete performances. A covenant to keep premises in repair is a continuing obligation; its breach is a continuing breach. A contract to deliver goods in monthly instalments creates a fresh obligation each month; default on each instalment is a separate, successive breach. The structure of the duty, not the mere persistence of the loss, decides the question.

Relationship with Section 23 (acts not actionable without special damage)

Section 22 must be read with its immediate neighbour, Section 23, which provides that in the case of a suit for compensation for an act which does not give rise to a cause of action unless some specific injury actually results from it, the period of limitation is computed from the time when the injury results. The two provisions address different problems and should not be conflated.

Section 22 is concerned with the continuance of a wrong — the wrong is actionable in itself, and the section keeps the cause of action renewing so long as the wrong endures. Section 23 is concerned with the accrual of a cause of action where the act alone is not enough: damage is the gist of the action, and time cannot begin to run until the special damage actually materialises. A classic example is a wrongful act that produces no actionable harm until some specific injury results, at which point — and not before — limitation starts.

The two can, on appropriate facts, operate in sequence. Where an act is not actionable without special damage and the damage, once it begins, continues to recur, Section 23 fixes the starting point at the first injury and Section 22 may then keep the period renewing for the continuing injurious operation of the wrong. But the student should keep the analytical division clear: Section 22 answers “is the wrong still going on?” while Section 23 answers “has an actionable injury yet resulted?”

Section 23 also has a wider reach than is sometimes appreciated. It has been applied even to claims arising under special or local laws, save where such application is expressly excluded, by virtue of the saving in Section 29 of the Act. To take its benefit, the plaintiff must establish that some specific injury has in fact resulted, the word “specific” meaning an injury that can be identified and pointed to, and the word “injury” embracing legal injury. The neighbouring provision, Section 24, supplies a small but useful drafting rule for this part of the Act — all instruments are, for the purposes of the Limitation Act, deemed to be made with reference to the Gregorian calendar. Together, Sections 22 to 24 form the compact cluster that governs the timing of the cause of action in continuing and damage-dependent claims.

Scope, relief and the limits of Section 22

It is a common error to treat Section 22 as a charter for unlimited recovery. It is not. The section keeps the cause of action alive; it does not abolish the limitation period for the relief claimed. Where the wrong is continuing, the plaintiff may sue for the continuance, but the monetary relief or the period of the wrong for which compensation is recoverable will be measured by the relevant Article read with the section. The plaintiff cannot, under the guise of a continuing wrong, recover compensation for a remote past that the Article would otherwise bar.

Equally, Section 22 does not apply where the wrong, though productive of lasting harm, was completed in a single act. This is the negative side of the Balkrishna test, and it is worth restating because examiners love it: a completed dispossession, a single wrongful demolition, a one-off conversion, a single act of defamation — none of these is a continuing wrong, however long the resulting loss endures. The continuance of damage is not the continuance of the wrong.

Finally, the section yields where the defendant acquires a right to continue the state of affairs complained of. Once a right is perfected — by prescription, by adverse possession extinguishing the owner’s title under Section 27, or by the grant of a lawful authority — the conduct ceases to be wrongful, and there is no continuing wrong for Section 22 to act upon. The doctrine protects against ongoing wrongs; it has no role once the conduct has become lawful.

Examination strategy and recurring MCQs

For judiciary and CLAT-PG candidates, this topic generates a predictable set of questions, and a small number of anchors will answer almost all of them. First, commit the bare text of Section 22 to memory, including the phrase “a fresh period of limitation begins to run at every moment of the time during which the breach or the tort continues.” Examiners frequently test the exact wording and the fact that the section prescribes no period of its own.

Second, master the Balkrishna Savalram Pujari distinction between a continuing wrong and a wrong with continuing consequences — this is the single most examined proposition, and the ouster-of-the-Guravs example is the stock illustration of a completed wrong. Pair it with the modern restatement in M. Siddiq v. Suresh Das and the duty-focused test. Third, memorise the leading examples by category: trade-mark infringement and passing off (Bengal Waterproof); obstruction of a right of way and encroachment on a public street (Sankar Dastidar; Hari Ram v. Jyoti Prasad); and continuing failure to deliver possession (Sunil Krishna Ghosh).

Fourth, keep Section 22 and Section 23 separate in your mind, and be ready to distinguish a continuing breach from successive breaches. A typical MCQ will offer a fact pattern and ask whether limitation runs afresh; the answer turns on whether the source of the wrong subsists. To consolidate the surrounding doctrine, revise alongside the chapters on the bar of limitation and the computation of the period of limitation, and return to the Limitation Act hub for the full chapter list.