A subsequent appeal challenging the same order is barred once an earlier appeal attains finality.

Smt. Puttamma and respondent No. 5 had proceedings against respondent No. 6 before the Assistant Commissioner, who passed an order on 15 May 2006.

Respondent No. 6 appealed, and the Deputy Commissioner dismissed that appeal on 8 July 2011.

The petitioners, claiming to be purchasers, later challenged the Assistant Commissioner’s order in appeals before the Deputy Commissioner.

Those appeals were dismissed on 12 September 2025 as barred by res judicata.

The petitioners then sought to quash the 2006, 2011 and 2025 orders, alleging, among other things, that they had not been parties to or aware of the earlier proceedings.

1. Whether the petitioners’ later appeals challenging the Assistant Commissioner’s order were maintainable after an earlier appeal against that order had been dismissed by the Deputy Commissioner.

2. Whether the Deputy Commissioner’s 2025 orders, and the earlier orders challenged in the writ petition, warranted interference under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution.

The Court applied the principle of res judicata and finality: a subsequent proceeding challenging the same order, after that order has already been adjudicated in an earlier appeal and the appellate decision has attained finality, is not maintainable.

The judgment identifies no specific statutory provision or precedent as the basis for this rule.

The Court treated the later appeals as challenges to the same Assistant Commissioner’s order that had already been considered in respondent No. 6’s appeal and dismissed by the Deputy Commissioner in 2011.

Since that earlier decision had attained finality, the Court held that the petitioners’ subsequent appeals were barred by res judicata and were not maintainable.

It also noted that the petitioners challenged the 2006 and 2011 orders in 2025, describing the lapse as nineteen years, and found no ground to interfere.

The writ petition was dismissed; any interim order was discharged and pending interlocutory applications were disposed of accordingly.