Writ petition challenging cancellation of a Letter of Intent by Indian Oil Corporation Limited for misrepresentation regarding a void lease deed. Court found the amendment of a cancelled deed legally unsustainable and allowed the impugned order.
Writ petition dismissed; no interference with the impugned order cancelling the Letter of Intent.
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Neutral Citation No. - 2024:AHC:111178-DB
Court No. - 40
Case :- WRIT - C No. - 13000 of 2024
Petitioner :- Vipendra Singh Respondent :- Union Of India And Another Counsel for Petitioner :- Ashish Dwivedi,Rajan Upadhyay,Sr. Advocate Counsel for Respondent :- A.S.G.I.,Devi Shanker Shukla,Gaurav Kumar Chand
Hon'ble Shekhar B. Saraf,J. Hon'ble Manjive Shukla,J.
"In your reply Ref nil dated 13.11.2023 to the show cause notice, you have mainly submitted as under:
1. You have not cancelled the lease deed and have only executed a titimma of the earlier lease deed due to increase of rentals.
2. The land was available with you at the time of LEC/FVC and the same is also available with you on date and in the interim the possession of the land has not been lost by you.
3. The LOI was granted to you after confirming the possession of the land.
4. The NOC from District Magistrate for establishing the RO has also been obtained.
We have carefully considered your submissions and the following have not been found to be acceptable due to the following reasons:
a) The lease deed dated 06.12.2018, on the basis of which you had offered the land was cancelled by you 09.09.2019 without intimating the corporation. The titimma dated 30.08.2022 was entered to amend the lease deed dated 06.12.2018. A titimma of a cancelled lease deed is void. The copy of the cancellation deed is attached.
b) As such, you did not have a valid title of the offered land during LEC on 04.10.2022 and yet you misrepresented before the Corporation that you had a valid title over the land.
c) During the entire selection process, you have never disclosed before the officials of the Corporation that you had cancelled the earlier lease deed and never submitted the cancellation deed. It was only during the legal search of the offered land that the aforesaid fact has emerged.
From the above it is concluded that you have deliberately misrepresented before the Corporation by submitting an invalid lease deed claiming it to be valid while you had already cancelled the said lease deed on 09.09.2019 and you have provided suppressed/misrepresented/incorrect or false information w.r.t land ownership under group which leads to action in line with clause 22 of advertising brochure being reproduced as follows:
Clause 22 of advertising brochure being reproduced as follows: 22. FALSE INFORMATION
If any statement made in the application or in the documents enclosed therewith or subsequently submitted in pursuance of the application by the candidate at any stage is found to have been suppressed/misrepresented/incorrect or false, then the application is liable to be rejected without assigning any reason and in case the applicant has been appointed as a dealer, the dealership is liable to be terminated. In such cases the candidate / dealer shall have no claim whatsoever against the respective Oil Company."
For the reasons mentioned above, it is clear that you deliberately suppressed the correct facts regarding offered land and misrepresented IOCL.
Therefore the Corporation has decided to cancelled the LOI ref: M/2022/IN001139/UP./000254/1401/00039, dated-27.10.2022 issued to you for the Location: "VILL-CHANDARPUR URF, BASMAHUA, BLOCKBAHARIA, TEHSIL-PHULPUR, DISTRICT- PRAYAGRAJ, State-Uttar Pradesh, advertised under OPEN Category in SRMP 2018 and hence LOI ref: M/2022/IN001139/UP./000254/1401/00039, dated-27.10.2022 issued to you is withdrawn with immediate effect and as such your candidature will not be considered by the Corporation for further selection process and the corporation shall be proceeding with the selection with the remaining candidates."
No. 576 measuring 1600 square meters. Subsequently, the L.O.I. was issued to the petitioner by I.O.C.L. on 25.08.2022. Upon such L.O.I. being issued, the petitioner entered into a 'tatimma'/amendment of the earlier lease deed dated 06.12.2018 extending the period of the said lease and also increasing the area of the land to 2000 square meters. Based on this document that was provided along with the earlier lease deed the verification was done by the District Magistrate. In the course of verification, I.O.C.L. discovered that the earlier lease deed dated 06.12.2018 had been cancelled on 09.09.2019. Naturally, upon discovery of the said document, the I.O.C.L. sought an explanation from the petitioner which was replied to by the petitioner by a letter dated 13.11.2023. After considering the said reply, I.O.C.L. has came to the finding by the impugned order dated 28.11.2023 that the entire process followed by the petitioner by entering into a 'tatimma' to a registered lease deed that had been cancelled was not feasible in law. Furthermore, the I.O.C.L. has come to the conclusion that false information in the nature of suppression of material facts has been provided by the petitioner and therefore, I.O.C.L. took a decision of canceling the L.O.I. issued to the petitioner.
Order Date :- 9.7.2024 Gaurav
(Manjive Shukla, J.) (Shekhar B. Saraf, J.)
Digitally signed by :- GAURAV PATEL High Court of Judicature at Allahabad
1 issue framed by the court
Whether the High Court should interfere with the Indian Oil Corporation Limited's decision to cancel a Letter of Intent due to suppression of material facts regarding the validity of a lease deed.
Vipendra Singh
Union Of India
Another
Shekhar B. Saraf
Manjive Shukla
As recorded by the court registry
2 orders share this CNR
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