Flat Purchasers Without Contractual Privity Cannot Maintain Writ Petitions Challenging Bank Auction Notices.

The petitioners, who claimed to have entered into agreements to purchase apartments from the second respondent and paid amounts towards the purchase, challenged the bank’s e-auction sale notice concerning the property. They sought to prevent the auction pending adjudication of their rights in civil proceedings.

The petitioners had also pursued remedies before the Consumer Forum and Civil Court; the judgment records that some consumer matters had been decided and an appeal concerning a Commercial Court decree was pending.

An earlier interim order deferred the e-auction subject to the petitioners meeting specified conditions.

The bank opposed the petition, contending, among other things, that the petitioners were only agreement holders and had no contractual relationship with it.

1. Whether the petitioners, as agreement holders without a contractual relationship with the bank, could maintain a writ petition under Articles 226 and 227 challenging the bank’s auction notice.

2. Whether the petitioners’ private disputes with the borrower, for which remedies had already been pursued before civil and consumer forums, could be adjudicated in the writ petition.

The Court considered the petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India.

It held that, in the circumstances of this case, the petitioners could not maintain a writ petition against the bank where no contractual obligation existed between them and the bank; disputes arising from the petitioners’ contractual relationship with the borrower were matters to be pursued through the appropriate civil or consumer remedies.

The Court treated maintainability as the threshold question. It accepted the bank’s submission that the petitioners had no contractual relationship with it, while recognising that their claims against the second respondent arose from their agreements to purchase the apartments and were already being pursued before civil and consumer forums.

Because those private disputes could not be resolved in the writ proceedings, the Court declined to examine the merits of the challenge to the auction notice.

It left the petitioners at liberty to pursue an appropriate remedy in accordance with law, and directed that all pending interlocutory applications stand closed.