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Ibrat Faizan vs. Omaxe Buildhome Private Limited

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 573Decided 13 May 2022
Civil Appeal No. 3072 of 2022
M.R. Shah · B.V. Nagarathna

Background

A flat buyer (Ibrat Faizan) had won a consumer complaint against the builder, Omaxe Buildhome, for delayed possession, with the State Consumer Commission ordering possession plus compensation. The builder's appeal was dismissed by the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (National Commission), which confirmed the order in favour of the buyer. Instead of appealing further, the builder filed a writ petition under Article 227 of the Constitution before the Delhi High Court, which granted an interim stay of the National Commission's order. The buyer challenged this before the Supreme Court, arguing that a writ petition under Article 227 was not even maintainable against an order of the National Commission passed in an appeal from a State Commission.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined Sections 58 and 67 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and found that a direct appeal to the Supreme Court against a National Commission order is available only when the National Commission was itself acting as a court of first instance for high-value complaints, not when it was hearing an appeal from a State Commission (as here). Since no further statutory appeal exists in that situation, the Court held that a High Court's supervisory writ jurisdiction under Article 227 remains available and was rightly invoked, relying on established Constitution Bench precedent that quasi-judicial tribunals like the National Commission remain subject to High Court supervision. However, the Court cautioned that this supervisory jurisdiction is narrow, and while it did not disturb the High Court's finding that the writ petition itself was maintainable, it dismissed the builder's appeal and left it to the High Court to decide the case on its merits, bearing this limited scope in mind.

Lesson Learnt

When a consumer forum's National Commission decides an appeal (rather than an original high-value complaint), there is no further right of appeal to the Supreme Court: an aggrieved party's remedy lies in a limited supervisory writ petition to the jurisdictional High Court, not a fresh round of merits review.

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

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