Subair and Surendran vs S and A Builders and Engineers Pvt. Ltd. and Others

Surendra Mohan, J.—The review petitioners, respondents 3 and 5 in W.P(c) No.9876 of 2012, have filed this Review Petition seeking review of our judgment dated 24.04.2012. According to the review petitioners though they were served with notice in the Writ Petition, the notice, a photocopy of which has been produced as Annexure-A, showed the date of hearing as 21.05.2012. Therefore, they were under the impression that the case would be taken up only on the said date. According to the review petitioners, it was in the above circumstances that they had neither appeared nor were represented, when the case was taken up before the vacation court on 21.04.2012. The learned counsel for the review petitioners also points out that this Court had proceeded to allow the Writ Petition and to grant Police protection to the writ petitioners noticing that though notice in the Writ Petition had been served 2 on the respondents through special messenger, none of them had chosen to appear before Court or to contest the case. Therefore, a conclusion that they had no tenable objection to offer has also been arrived at.

Notice in this Review Petition was ordered. Adv. V.V. Joy appears for respondents 4 and 5. The learned Government Pleader appears for respondents 2 and 3. Advocate Smitha George appears for the 1st respondent. Therefore, service is complete.

We called for the original of Annexure-A from the Registry and perused the same. It is true that notice was served on the review petitioners, intimating them that the case would be posted on or after 21.05.2012. Therefore, the learned counsel for the review petitioners is justified in his contention that they were under the impression that the matter would be taken up only after the said date. Since the petitioners were harboring under an impression that the matter would be taken up only after 21.05.2012, they cannot be found fault with for not having appeared in Court on 24.04.2012, when the matter was finally disposed of. We were misled by the endorsement of the Registry that notice had been served on the review petitioners. It had not been brought to our notice that the hearing date intimated to them was as seen in Annexure-A. It is clear from the above that the review petitioners had no notice of the posting of the case on 24.04.2012. For the above reasons, we are satisfied that our judgment requires to be reviewed. This Review Petition is accordingly allowed. The judgment dated 24.04.2012 in Writ Petition No.9876 of 2012 is set aside. The Registry is directed to post the Writ Petition before the regular Bench for further orders.