Persons challenging an appellate order are necessary parties to proceedings seeking its implementation.

The private respondent sought implementation of an Appellate Authority’s order through O.A. 1759 of 2026 before the West Bengal Land Reforms and Tenancy Tribunal.

The Tribunal directed the BL & LRO to consider the respondent’s representation after hearing interested parties, but the petitioners—against whom the Appellate Authority’s order operated—had not been impleaded in that application.

The petitioners had separately challenged the Appellate Authority’s order in O.A. 2205 of 2026, which remained pending.

The petitioners challenged the Tribunal’s order before the High Court.

1. Whether the petitioners were necessary parties to the application seeking implementation of an Appellate Authority’s order that operated against them, particularly when they had challenged that order in a separate pending application.

2. Whether the Tribunal’s direction to hear interested parties at the implementation stage cured the failure to implead the petitioners in the application.

3. Whether the implementation application and the petitioners’ challenge to the Appellate Authority’s order should be heard together before any implementation direction is granted.

The Court applied the principles of natural justice, including audi alteram partem, and the requirement that a person directly affected by the relief sought be joined and heard in the proceeding determining that relief.

A later opportunity to be heard before an implementing authority does not necessarily cure the prejudice caused by exclusion from the proceeding in which implementation was directed.

The Court distinguished Sudhir Chandra Das v. State of West Bengal, WPLRT 31 of 2026: in that case, the order sought to be implemented had attained finality because it had not been challenged, whereas the order here was under challenge in O.A. 2205 of 2026.

The Appellate Authority’s order operated against the petitioners, and implementation of that order could affect their rights.

Since the petitioners had also challenged it in O.A. 2205 of 2026, the Tribunal’s implementation-related direction in O.A. 1759 of 2026 could not properly be made without joining and hearing them.

The direction to provide a hearing later before the BL & LRO did not remedy their exclusion from the Tribunal proceeding itself.

Unlike in Sudhir Chandra Das, the underlying order had not attained finality; accordingly, the implementation application and the pending challenge should be considered together, without the High Court prejudging either application’s merits.

O.A. 1759 of 2026 is to be heard together with O.A. 2205 of 2026 and disposed of as expeditiously as possible, preferably within one year of communication of the judgment; the Tribunal was directed to advance the hearing date fixed in O.A. 2205 of 2026.

The Court expressed no view on the merits of either application, left both to be decided independently and in accordance with law, and made no order as to costs.