- (1.) Leave granted. The Appellant is the widow of Major General B.N. Kumar, who was killed in war with Pakistan. She applied for allotment of LPG distributorship on compassionate ground. Respondent No. 1 - Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. accepted her application and vide letter dated 27.11.1989/20.3.1990 she was offered the dealership at Noida. However, the distributorship agreement was executed only on 7.7.1994.
(2.) The Appellant successfully operated the dealership from 1994 to 2001 without any cause of complaint from any consumer. After seven years, she was served with show cause notice dated 27.4.2001 proposing to take action on the ground of violation of the terms of agreement. It was alleged that during the inspections carried out by the field staff, the Appellant was rarely available at the showroom. The Appellant filed detailed reply dated 2.5.2001 and denied the allegation. The Chief Area Manager (Marketing Division) took cognizance of the Appellant's assertion that she was signing the documents on day to day basis and supervising the dealership and issued letter dated 5.6.2001, paragraph 2 of which reads as under: Keeping in view the above, the Corporation has decided to defer any further action pursuant to the Show Cause notice. You are hereby WARNED that in case at any later date it is found that there is any breach of any term of the agreement including that of Clause 23(b) we shall be constrained to take further action as may be deemed appropriate including Termination of Distributorship.
(3.) In June 2001, the Appellant sent communication to the Chief Area Manager of Respondent No. 1 seeking latter's approval to travel to New Zealand to attend her daughter, who was expecting a child.;