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Rajasthan Housing Board and Anr v. Ratan Devi

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 793Decided 22 Jul 2019
Civil Appeal No. 5739 of 2019
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Indira Banerjee

Background

A woman was allotted a low-income-group tenement by the Rajasthan Housing Board in 1992, with a balance of Rs. 47,674 payable at the time of possession, but she never deposited the balance and the Board eventually cancelled the allotment. She filed a consumer complaint only in 2008, 16 years after the allotment and a decade after being told she did not qualify for a special payment-exemption scheme, disputing that she had ever been given a possession letter or cancellation notice. Consumer forums gave conflicting rulings, and the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission ultimately ruled in her favour, restoring an order directing the Board to hand over the tenement, prompting the Board's appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the respondent's own letters to the Board, written in 1996 and 2008, expressly admitted she was financially unable to pay the balance: directly undercutting her claim before the consumer forums that no possession letter had ever reached her requiring payment. The Court held that her complaint, filed 16 years after allotment and a decade after her exemption request was rejected, was hopelessly barred by the limitation period under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, and that the Board could not in any event be bound to honour 1992 pricing after such a long delay. The Court set aside the NCDRC's judgment directing allotment, but using its Article 142 power to do complete justice, directed the Board to pay the respondent a total of Rs. 1 lakh (including refund of her deposit) within two months, disposing of the appeal on that basis.

Lesson Learnt

Consumers must act within the statutory limitation period: a complaint filed many years after a cause of action arises can fail on delay alone, however sympathetic the underlying facts, and courts may still order a modest monetary remedy to balance equities even while rejecting the original relief claimed.

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

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