NIRTA RAM Vs. THE ASSISTANT COLLECTOR AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS judgment will dispose of six connected appeals under Clause 10 of the Letters Patent (Letters Patent Appeals Nos. 79 to 84 of 1965) against the judgment of a learned Single Judge of this Court by which he dismissed six writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution.

(2.) THE firm Messrs Ralla Ram -Jai Gopal was a debtor of the State Bank of Patiala to the extent of Rs. 6,36,802 -7 -6. Since this Bank could not recover its dues, it obtained a recovery certificate for this sum under the provisions of the Patiala Recovery of State Dues Act, 2002 BK. and the same was sent to the Collector, Patiala, for the realisation of the amount. It entrusted the recovery proceedings to Shri Tejwant Rai, who was described as the "Collector, Recovery of State Bank of Patiala Dues, Patiala". It is common ground that this amount was "State Dues" as defined in the Act and it could be recovered under Section 5 of the same as arrears of land revenue. In pursuance of the recovery proceedings, the properties of the debtor -firm were attached on 7th April, 1962. A proclamation for sale under Section 79 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887 (hereinafter referred to as the Act) was then issued and it was provided in the sale -proclamation that the sanction of the Commissioner had been obtained under Section 75 of the Act on 9th November, 1962. After the description of the properties, which were to be sold, the following three conditions were appended:

(3.) LEARNED Counsel submitted that, admittedly, the bids given by the Appellants were the highest and they had also deposited 25 per cent of the amount of their bids. Consequently, under Section 85 of the Act they had to be declared the purchasers of those properties. The sale could only be set aside under Section 91 if an application in this respect was made to the Commissioner within 30 days from the date of the sale on the ground of some material irregularity or mistake in publishing or conducting it. Such an application had not been filed in the present cases and on the expiry of this period, the Commissioner was bound to confirm the sale. Condition No. 2, which provided that the Collector would have the right to cancel the auction and order re -auction, if the properties fetched less than the reasonable price, was invalid, since this condition was contrary to the provisions of the Act and thus could not be imposed. He also submitted that the decision given by a Division Bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in Raghunandan Reddy v. State of Hyderabad : A.I.R. 1963 A.P. 110, relied on by the learned Single Judge, had no application to the facts of the present case. It was conceded by the learned Counsel for the Appellants that he would succeed only if he could show that condition No. 2 mentioned in the proclamation of sale could not be imposed and the same was invalid. He submitted that the provisions of the Act did not warrant the imposition of such a condition. Besides, unlimited powers had been given to the Collector under it and he could misuse those powers by merely saying that in a particular case the highest bid was not reasonable.