Place petitions before FM: HC on poor condition of debt recovery tribunals in Mumbai

In an unusual course of action, the Bombay high court, on Tuesday, directed that two writ petitions complaining about lack of appointments and infrastructure for

In an unusual course of action, the Bombay high court, on Tuesday, directed that two writ petitions complaining about lack of appointments and infrastructure for the Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs) be placed before the Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

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The bench of chief justice Pradeep Nandrajog and justice Bharati Dangre was irked to note the apathetic condition of the DRTs in Mumbai.

The bench said, “These two writ petitions should be placed before the Union minister of finance.”

Noticing that there was no point issuing expeditious hearing of separate proceedings initiated by International Asset Reconstruction Company and Kotak Mahindra Bank since posts of presiding officers of both DRTs in Mumbai were vacant.

It has now directed the establishments to append their writ petitions and forward it to the department of financial services, which, in turn, has been ordered to ensure that the documents are placed before Sitharaman, expecting that she will issue necessary directions.

International Asset Reconstruction Company has approached the high court through advocate Vinod Deshpande complaining about the delay in deciding one of its proceedings, initiated way back in 1989, by filing a suit before the high court.

Ten years later, in 1999, the matter was transferred to a debt recovery tribunal in Mumbai after the Recovery of Debts Due to Banks and Financial Institutions Act, 1993 came into force. The petitioner body has complained that the matter has not been decided primarily because of the lack of appointments on DRTs in Mumbai and also because of lack of infrastructure.

Both the DRTs in Mumbai remained non-functional for a considerable period after a fire engulfed the building where the two DRTs and the debt recovery appellate tribunals were housed in Mumbai in June 2018.

However, in January and February 2019, the presiding officers retired and additional charge of the two DRTs in Mumbai was handed over to the DRT in Pune. Recently, the presiding officer of the Pune DRT, too, has become vacant. Now the DRT at Vashi has been taking up only urgent debt recovery matters arising out of Mumbai.

In this backdrop, the bench said, it was useless to speak about financial institutions being under a stress. “It is useless to talk about giving an impetus to the economy by reviving the realty sector. It is useless to tell the citizens that if the realty sector and the infrastructure development sector grow, industries which supply raw material would prosper and in turn, the economy would grow,” the bench added.