Making its displeasure clear, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) slapped a penalty of Rs 25,000 on Yamuna Nagar Improvement Trust, a local body, for locking an allottee into a prolonged and vexatious litigation. It also insisted that the same may be recovered from the salaries of officers pursuing such a vexatious and frivolous litigation.

In Dina Nath vs. Yamuna Nagar Improvement Trust, an 80-year-old man was pursuing a dogged legal battle with the Respondent over a small plot of land. He had paid the cost of the land but possession was not handed over on one pretext or the other, with changed land use norm being the oft-cited reason. The matter could have been easily resolved amicably by allotting a mutually acceptable plot as an alternative to the petitioner but for curious reasons, the officers of the Governmental agency chose to lock him in a legal battle at various levels of consumer forum.

The NCDRC deploring this tendency cited several verdicts of the Apex court where the tendency on the part of the Government departments to resort to vexatious litigation at the drop of the hat was graphically highlighted. The NCDRC has given an order that would hopefully have a chastening effect on the bureaucracy across the country. Penalty on faceless governmental behemoths have had little effect on curtailing vexatious litigation thus far. The Commission has hit where it hurts.

(The author is a New Delhi-based chartered accountant)

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