Businessman and his brother fined Rs 50,000

The Delhi High Court has slapped a cost of Rs 50,000 on a businessman and his brother for concealing facts in a case filed by them seeking direction to centre for allotment of a shop.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw dismissed the plea of Ram Chander Aggarwal and his brother B P Aggarwal. The court said the petitioners have abused the process of law by filing three rounds of litigations on the same issue which was already decided by the Supreme Court.

"Re-litigation is an abuse of the process of the court and a party cannot be permitted to re-litigate the issue which has been tried and decided earlier against him," the court said.

While imposing the cost, the single judge had said the petitioners concealed the facts, including various court proceedings and decisions thereafter in the case relating to the allotment of shop no 114 in New Qutub Road Market.

Aggrawal brothers had moved the court for an order to the Land and Development Office (L&DO) of the Urban Development Ministry and MCD to issue sale certificate to them.

They had claimed that their father had got the occupancy of the shop in 1956 by paying rent to the government and they have been in possession of the shop but later it was alloted to another person by the government without informing them.

The court accepted the government's arguments that the market was constructed by the government for displaced persons under the Displaced Persons (Compensation & Rehabilitation) Act. Their father Shri Bhagwan Dass was not a displaced person and the shop was allotted to him as a temporary measure only but could not be transferred or sold to him under the Act.

It was also submitted that the Aggarwals were required to pay the rent to the owner to whom it was alloted under the scheme for displaced person in 1962.

A suit for recovery from the possession of shop against Aggrawals had attained its finality after the Supreme Court endorsed the same in 1990.

Later Aggarwals re-initiated the case on a different ground that the government had allotted the shop without hearing them.