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Pratibha Ramesh Patel v. Union of India and Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · Neutral citation not assigned (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 35 of 2016)Decided 9 Mar 2016
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 35 of 2016
Justice Kurian Joseph · Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman

Background

The petitioner was facing recovery action by a bank under the SARFAESI Act over property treated as secured collateral. She had already filed a writ petition under Article 226 before the Bombay High Court challenging the same SARFAESI proceedings, which the High Court admitted and granted a conditional interim order on (which later stood vacated when she failed to comply with the deposit condition); that High Court petition remained pending. While it was still pending, she filed a near-identical writ petition directly before the Supreme Court under Article 32, seeking essentially the same reliefs.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court compared the two writ petitions and found the one filed before it was virtually a copy of the one pending before the Bombay High Court, with only minor changes. It held that having already invoked the High Court's constitutional writ jurisdiction under Article 226 on the same facts and for the same reliefs, the petitioner could not simultaneously maintain a parallel petition under Article 32 before the Supreme Court: this amounted to an abuse of the process of court. The writ petition was accordingly dismissed, with costs of Rs. 1,00,000 directed to be deposited with the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee within four weeks.

Lesson Learnt

A litigant cannot run two parallel constitutional writ petitions, one before a High Court and an near-identical one before the Supreme Court, on the same cause of action; doing so is treated as abuse of process and can attract heavy costs, not just dismissal.

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

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