Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 18
Ending a legal controversy generated by two conflicting judgments over extending time period to pay the remaining one-time settlement (OTS) amount, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that the extension was permissible in case of a deserving and bonafide borrower.
The High Court in the case of ‘Anu Bhalla and another versus District Magistrate, Pathankot’ had held that it was permissible for a court to extend the time period for payment of settlement amount in deserving cases. But a Coordinate Bench of the High Court, in “M/s Milkhi Ram Bhagwan Dass versus District Magistrate”, decided on December 23, 2020, had taken a diametrically opposite view to hold that the claim for extension was not maintainable at the hands of the borrower.
The Bench of Justice Jaswant Singh and Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu asserted that it did not subscribe to the Milkhi Ram case judgment. The Bench asserted that the judgment placed solitary reliance on an Allahabad High Court verdict. This, the Bench asserted, could not be treated as a correct position of law to completely foreclose a borrower’s rights.
The Bench added the Allahabad High Court judgment could not be interpreted to lay down an absolute principle of law that extension was impermissible beyond the last date of OTS, as was sought to be culled out in Milkhi Ram’s judgment.
The Bench added: “Rather the principle, which can be culled out from the judgment, is that multiple extensions cannot be granted to a borrower to make the payment of OTS amount, which was one of the observations in Anu Bhalla’s case and we too subscribe to the view.”
It further asserted that all portions of banks’ OTS policies, providing for extensions, would be rendered unsustainable, if the Milkhi Ram judgment was to be applied. The judgment in Milkhi Ram was per incuriam or lacked due regard to the law or the facts and was much less a binding precedent.
“We find that the Anu Bhalla judgment lays down the law more elaborately and accurately after discussing the judgments of the Supreme Courts as also the previous judgments of a Division Bench of this court. It lays down the principle in tune with the principles culled out in the judgmentshellip;,” the Bench observed.
One-time settlement period can be extended, says High Court
{$excerpt:n}
