M/s Vidhya Surgical Cotton & Ors. vs Bank of India & Anr

Ashok Menon, Chairperson

The Appellants have come up with an appeal challenging the impugned order dated 22.11.2018 in I.A. No. 1100/2018 in S.A. No. 47/2018 on the files of the Debts Recovery Tribunal, Nagpur (D.R.T.) where the Ld. Presiding Officer declined to grant any interlocutory relief to the Appellants with regard to the auction sale of the property which was held on 07.06.2018. The Appellants wanted to protect their possession and therefore, the prayer that was sought in the application was to stall the handing over of the possession to the auction purchaser. Consequent to the dismissal of this application by the D.R.T., the Appellants had approached the Hon’ble High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Bench at Nagpur seeking ad-interim relief. The Hon’ble High Court vide order dated 26.11.2018 held that the auction may go on and the possession of the Petitioners shall not be disturbed until further orders subject to the Petitioners depositing a sum of ₹11,86,000/- within a week. The Appellants complied with that order of deposit. Thereafter, the Writ Petition was disposed of and the Appellants filed the present appeal before this Tribunal which came up for consideration and under the provisions of Sec. 18(1) of the Securitisation & Reconstruction of Financial Assets & Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002(‘SARFAESI Act’, for short), and the Appellants were directed to deposit a sum of ₹11,86,000/- deposited before this Tribunal as well and an order to maintain status quo order was granted. On the basis of that status quo order, the possession of the property has not yet been handed over to the auction purchaser despite the fact that the sale took place as early as 07.06.2018.

I heard both sides. On perusal of the records, I find that the prayer to set aside the sale or any relief regarding the sale which took place on 07.06.2018 is not incorporated in the present S.A. No. 47 of 2018. The Appellants have filed an amendment application as I.A. No. 1099/2018 together with this application for interlocutory relief filed as I.A. No. 1100/2018 but the Ld. Presiding Officer did not consider the application for amendment and instead, I.A. No. 1100/2018 was dismissed and no interlocutory relief was granted. The application for amendment is still pending consideration before D.R.T. Considering the relief sought, I find that the Ld. Presiding Officer was right when the interlocutory relief in I.A. No. 1100/2018 was rejected because without the amendment application being allowed the Applicants could not have sought the prayer with regard to the auction that took place on 07.06.2018. Similarly, in this appeal also, the Appellants cannot seek relief with  regard to the auction dated 07.06.2018 and all acts consequent to the auction.

Under the circumstances, I find that the appeal is not maintainable, and therefore, needs to be disposed of with a direction to the D.R.T. to consider the amendment application pending before the D.R.T. as I.A. No. 1099 of 2018 as expeditiously as possible at any rate within three months from the date of the receipt of this order.

With these observations, the Appeal is disposed of, without going into the merits of the rival contentions raised by parties regarding the amendment, and the application shall be independently decided by the D.R.T. on its merits.