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Dr. Manjeet Kaur Monga (Dead) Thr. Her Legal Heirs Karan Vir Singh Monga v. K.L. Suneja & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 637Decided 18 Jul 2017
Civil Appeal Nos. 5032-5033 of 2016
Justice Kurian Joseph · Justice R. Banumathi

Background

The original complainant had booked a flat and paid installments totalling Rs. 4,53,850 between 1989 and 1993, but the builder failed to complete construction within the promised time and eventually cancelled the allotment in 2005 after years of no communication. The Competition Appellate Tribunal found the builder guilty of unfair trade practice, rejected the complainant's demand for possession of the flat, but awarded 15% compound interest on the deposited amount up to the cancellation date. Both the complainant's legal heirs and the builder (along with Citibank, over a disputed pay-order) appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the Tribunal's award of 15% compound interest itself constituted the "compensation" contemplated under Section 12-B of the Act, rejecting the builder's argument that compensation required a separately quantified amount. However, a related dispute had emerged during the hearing: the builder's pay-order payment of the compensation amount had been deducted from its account in 2005 but never reached the complainant, and was only re-credited by Citibank over a decade later in 2016, raising unresolved questions of whether interest should run for that period and who (the builder, the complainant, or Citibank) should bear it. Since Citibank had not been a party before the Tribunal and these specific sub-issues had never been examined, the Court finally decided and closed the core compensation entitlement up to 30.04.2005, while remitting only the limited question of post-cancellation compensation and Citibank's liability to the Tribunal, directing that Citibank be impleaded as a party for that purpose.

Lesson Learnt

A tribunal's award of statutory interest can itself qualify as "compensation" even without a separately fixed lump sum; and courts can finally resolve the core dispute while sending only a genuinely unaddressed subsidiary issue (here, a bank's liability for a delayed pay-order) back for fresh examination by the specialist body.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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