The Supreme Court on Monday said the corporate houses are using the courts as collecting agents by filing cheque bouncing cases.

Referring to filing of 73,00 cases in a single day in a Bangalore court, a bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justices R V Raveendran and Dalveer Bhandari said: “These corporate houses are using the courts as their collecting agents.” “We cannot impose more court fees, but we can impose a 10 per cent fine in such cases,” the bench said during the hearing of a petition on another case.

The bench wondered how could a court handle if so many cases under the section 138 of the Negotiable Instrument Act were filed in a single day. Courts could not be used for such matters by the telecom operators, banks and other corporate houses, the court observed. The court was hearing a petition relating to financial matters and pending adjudication for several years.