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Sunil Vasudeva & Ors. v. Sundar Gupta & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 716Decided 2 Jul 2019
Civil Appeal No. 5140 of 2019
Justice A.M. Khanwilkar · Justice Ajay Rastogi

Background

The dispute concerned a property at 43, Prithviraj Road, New Delhi, which the appellants' predecessor had purchased at an income-tax auction in 1964, while the respondents (grandsons of the original owner) claimed the property through a long-pending civil suit and writ petition. The Calcutta High Court, in review jurisdiction, had recalled an earlier order and restored the respondents' decades-old writ petition (filed in 1985) to be heard afresh on its merits, and the appellants challenged that restoration before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court declined to go into the merits of the underlying property dispute itself, holding that a party cannot be left remediless where a genuine question (here, about the maintainability of a related civil suit under Section 293 of the Income Tax Act) had never actually been examined on its merits by any court. It found no error in the High Court's exercise of its review jurisdiction to restore the old writ petition for a fresh merits hearing, and directed the High Court to decide that writ petition expeditiously given how long it had been pending. The appeal challenging the restoration order was accordingly dismissed, with no order as to costs.

Lesson Learnt

Courts will generally ensure a litigant gets at least one genuine hearing on the merits of a live legal grievance, even after decades of procedural history: a technical or procedural order that never actually examined the substance of a claim is not a bar to that claim later being properly heard.

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

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