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Judgment
The petitioner, a Financial Institution, has invoked the supervisory jurisdiction conferred upon the Chairperson of DRAT under Section 17-A of the Recovery of Debts Due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act,1993(RDDBFI Act,1993' in short) for setting aside of an order passed by the learned Recovery Officer whereby he has cancelled the auction of the mortgaged property in question in execution of recovery certificate issued by DRT in petitioner's O.A. under Section 19 of RDDBFI Act, 1993. The grievance of the petitioner is that the Recovery Officer who has cancelled the auction in favour of respondent no.2 lawfully conducted by his predecessor recovery officer has acted total in excess of his jurisdiction. It is also the grievance of the petitioner that the recovery officer is not proceeding fairly in the execution proceedings and by setting aside the auction lawfully conducted on the ground that there was no proper compliance of the procedural pre-auction steps ignoring the fact that neither the CH petitioner nor the borrower whose property had been auctioned had raised any objection to the auction. For this reason the petitioner has sought not only setting aside of the order of cancellation of auction already conducted but has also sought transfer of execution case to another Recovery Officer.
At the time of hearing Mr.SanjeevBhandari, learned counsel for the petitioner had argued that the petitioner has invoked supervisory jurisdiction conferred upon the Chairperson of DRAT since the present recovery officer seized of the matter has started acting as if he is the appellate authority over his predecessor who had conducted the auction and by reversing the decision of his predecessor has far exceeded his authority and passed a perverse order for setting aside the auction thereby putting the public money of crores of rupees recovered with great difficulty in jeopardy. When it was put to Mr.Bhandari as to why the petitioner has not filed statutory appeal against the impugned order of the recovery officer as provided under Section 30 of the RDDBFI Act,1993 the answer was that in case unfettered power is exercised by recovery officers ignoring the law the appropriate remedy in such like situations is not an appeal to the Presiding Officer of DRT but is as provided under Section 17-A of the RDDBFI Act,1993. It was also contended that the petitioner who has to recover crores of rupees from its defaulter borrower has no faith in the present recovery officer the way he is proceeding in the manner to confer undue benefit to someone who did not participate in the auction process earlier initiated by his predecessor and, therefore the recovery proceedings should be withdrawn from the board of present recovery officer and transferred to any other recovery officer.
However,none of the two relief sought to be obtained by the petitioner by invoking Section 17-A can be granted in the present proceedings in view of a recent judgment dated 08.11.2019of a Division Bench of Hon'ble Delhi High Court in CWP No. 11880/2019, "Zakir Ali RanavsEdel Weiss Asset Reconstruction Company Limited", wherein it has been held that anyone aggrieved by any order of the recovery officer has to avail of the statutory remedy of appeal to the Presiding Officer of DRT who also has the power of superintendence over the recovery officers.
As far as the prayer for transfer of the recovery proceedings from the present RO to any other RO is concerned I find no justification for doing that. Just because the petitioner thinks that the recovery officer has passed an illegal order that does not suit it that feeling does not justify withdrawl of the case from one recovery officer and transfer to another. All grievances which the petitioner has against the manner in which the impugned order came to be passed can be raised before the learned Presiding Officer and if the recovery officer is found to have passed an illegal or even a perverse order the learned Presiding Officer can always correct the illegality.
Thus, this petition is dismissed with the clarification that I have not gone into the merits of the case on any aspect except that the prayer for transfer of the recovery proceedings to any other recovery officer has not been found to be justified at all.