'Debt recovery order cannot be challenged in writ petitions before high courts'

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: A Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) order cannot be challenged in the High Court and the parties should fight it out in the designated Appellate bodies, a division bench of the High Court of Karnataka has said.

A single-judge bench had dismissed the petition filed by a company, which was pending for five years.

“Merely because a contention as to breach of natural justice has been taken up, a Writ Court does not readily grant interference. Such a contention can be urged even in the Appeal which the statute itself provides for,” the Division Bench said, dismissing the appeal against the single-judge order.

Ms SKL Hotels Private Limited had challenged a DRT order in a dispute between itself and Twenty Fourteen Hotels India Pvt Ltd before the single judge bench.

The petition filed in 2017 was dismissed as not maintainable on December 15, 2022, and the issue was relegated to the Appellate body of DRT. The Hotel then filed an appeal before the division bench.

It was claimed that since the petition was before the single judge for five years, it could not now be taken to the Appellate body as it was barred by the Limitation Act.

The division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Krishna S Dixit in their recent judgment said, “The submission of learned counsel for the Appellants that years having lapsed, his clients could not have been relegated to the Appellate remedy does not much impress us. It is not the case of Appellants that there is no such remedy available in the statute; apparently, it does. Therefore, the learned Single Judge in his discretion declined indulgence.”

The HC also said that the same arguments presented in the HC could be presented in the Appellate body of DRT as well.

“As already mentioned above, the ground of violation of principles of natural justice is not prohibited from being urged in the statutory Appeal. It hardly needs to be stated that all grounds taken up in the Writ Petition can be urged in the appeal against the order of the DRT,” it said.

The HC said that the Appellate Authority would have a wider scope for interference than the HC, as it was a first appeal.