C.A. No. 004936 - 004937 / 2021

A court directing substitution of a legally valid, irrevocable bank guarantee issued by a Scheduled Foreign Bank (listed in the Second Schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934) with one from a "Scheduled Indian Bank" is impermissible in the absence of an explicit statutory distinction between the two categories, particularly where a party has acted to its detriment in compliance with the original court order. As analysed on casestatus.in, the doctrine of promissory estoppel operates to protect a litigant who has changed its position in bona fide reliance on an unambiguous court direction, and such a direction cannot be varied retrospectively to that party's prejudice.