Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member
This Appeal is preferred against the order dated 18-09-2017, passed by the Ld. District Forum, South 24 Parganas in CC/387/2015. By the impugned order, the complaint case has been decreed in favour of the Respondent.
The dispute relates to non-return of NSC and LIC Policy Certificates to the Respondent by the Appellant Bank.
We heard the parties at length and gone through the documents on record.
Ld. Advocate for the Appellants though called in question the admissibility of the complaint case on limitation ground, it appears from the record that, in the wake of rejection of its maintainability petition by the Ld. District Forum, the Appellants preferred a Revision before this Commission. Eventually that Revision too was dismissed by this Commission. As it appears, no Appeal/Revision was preferred before the Hon’ble National Commission against the said order of this Commission. In such circumstances, Appellants cannot rake up this issue afresh.
In any case, on the point of merit we found reasonable ground to interfere with the impugned order of the Ld. District Forum.
Vide its order dated 18-09-2017 though the Ld. District Forum directed the Appellants to pay the LIC amount to the Respondent, it somehow overlooked the fact that the same stood in the name of one Sri Kalyan Kumar Palit. For obvious reason, the Respondent cannot get the proceeds of LIC policy that stands in the name of another person.
Similarly, while the authenticity of some of the NSC Certificates has been challenged by the Appellants and the Post Office concerned could not answer the query of the Appellants properly, it appears to us that unless the version of Post Office concerned is taken into consideration, the dispute cannot be conclusively decided.
Although prima facie it appears to be a definite case of deficiency in service on the part of the Appellants, we cannot overlook the fact that, there was definite lack of due diligence on the part of the Respondent who did not take up the matter with the Appellants in right earnest. As he made inordinate delay in taking appropriate legal recourse against the Appellants, the matter only got complicated.
Be that as it may, as the situation stands now, it seems that for proper adjudication of the dispute, inclusion of necessary parties, viz., LICI, Post office, Kalyan Kumar Palit is inevitable.
Accordingly, we are constrained to remand the case to the Forum below for re-adjudication of the same after inclusion of the above mentioned parties to the case.
The Appeal, in view of this, stands allowed in part. Parties to appear before the Ld. District Forum on 03-02-2020 for steps by the Respondent.