Bombay high court tells bank to hand over Pune agricultural land to senior citizen who bid for it in 2008 auction

The Bombay high court (HC) chided the Jankalyan Sahakari Bank for taking advantage of the auction of a property and collecting the entire consideration amount without

The Bombay high court (HC) chided the Jankalyan Sahakari Bank for taking advantage of the auction of a property and collecting the entire consideration amount without handing over the possession of the property to the successful bidder. The bidder in the case is a senior citizen. He had approached the court after he failed to get the physical possession of the 6.8-hectare land for which he had paid the entire consideration amount in 2008 itself. The court directed the bank to ensure that the property which was occupied was vacated, and the possession handed over to the senior citizen in four weeks.

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The division bench of justices SC Dharmadhikari and Gautam Patel was informed by the petitioner’s advocate, Subhash Jha, that his client, Harishkumar Vaswani, had succeeded in winning the auction of an agricultural land in Pune. Jha submitted that the reserve price was ₹30 lakh for the 6.8-hectare land and Vaswani had paid the entire bid amount of around ₹33 lakh in three instalments between December 2007 and January 2008. He submitted that despite paying the amount, Vaswani did not get the possession of the property and the land was in the possession of another person, who was also impleaded as a respondent.

Jha concluded that after receiving the entire amount from the bidder, it was the responsibility of the bank to dispose of the occupant and hand over the possession of the property to his client, which in this case the financial institution failed to do.

The bank’s advocate, BV Samant, said that though Vaswani had paid the entire bid amount in 2008, he had failed to pay the stamp duty, owing to which, the sale deed came into effect only in 2019. He then submitted that as the paper work had been completed, the bank undertook to dispossess the occupant and hand over the property to Vaswani within four weeks.

After hearing the submissions, the bench observed, “We do not think that having obtained all the benefits under the auction and retaining the sum, the second respondent (bank) has exhibited that it is acting fairly and particularly with a senior citizen like the petitioner. It is in the least honouring its contractual commitments.”

The bench further said that as the occupant had not filed any claim to the property, the bank should have completed the process of taking over the land and handing it over to the petitioner.

The court also gave Vaswani the option of recovering the entire sum paid by him with a yearly interest of 8% if the bank failed to hand over possession of the land within four weeks and disposed of the petition.