Adv.Mr.Thomas for Revisionist and Adv.Mr.Wawikar for the Respondent present. Heard both the sides. This Revision Petition can be disposed of at the stage of admission itself. The admitted facts are as follows. That the Revision Petitioner is the original complainant from the complaint No.656/07 filed before the Bandra Suburban District Consumer Forum, Mumbai. Said complaint was filed on 17/11/07. It was admitted by the District Forum on 3/12/2007. At the time of admission, the District Forum has also considered the application U/s 13(1)(B) of the C.P.Act and granted ad interim relief in favour of the complainant. The said order was further extended till the disposal of the complaint by order dated 22/4/2008. Thereafter, the complainant made a grievance that said interim order was not obeyed by the Opponents and Opponents have committed breach of the said order, and, therefore, complainant has filed an application invoking the jurisdiction of the District Forum U/s 25 (1) & 25 (2) of the C.P.Act. The said application was given by the complainant in the pending proceeding. It was not separately numbered. However, learned counsel states that it was accepted and exibited in the said complaint. The copy of the same was also served on the Opponents and the Opponents also have filed reply to the said application. It further appears that there was a grievance of opponent in respect of non registration of the said application. Therefore, the complainant gave another application on 1/2/2011 making prayer that the application filed U/s 25(1)(2) of the C.P.Act 1986 may please be heard and decided before the main complaint. The complainant also prayed that the direction may be given to Registrar of the District Forum to register the said application separately. Copy of this application was also given to the Opponents. The Opponents objected to the said application by filing say. After hearing both the sides, the application dated 1/2/2011 was decided by the District Forum by order dated 1/2/2011 and the application was rejected on the ground that the State Commission in the matter of Amerali Tehrani Vs.Rajesh Sukhtankar has observed,

          “Section 25(2) permits the Consumer Fora to sell way the

          Attached property after three months if breach of interim order

          Continues, but Act, Rules and Regulations have not provided

          Any procedure for sale of such property and therefore, the

          Consumer for a can evolve its own procedure for sale of such

          Property while exercising powers U/s 25(2). However, it is to be kept in mind that Consumer Fora shall evolve such a procedure which is just and based on principles of natural justice. Said procedure shall not be fanciful, arbitrary, but shall be realistic one so as to deliver a justice to the party. This direction is provided to the Consumer Fora till the Central Government or the State Government or the National Commission makes rules and/or regulations providing the procedure of an attachment & sale of property under Section 25(1) & (2).”

Making reference to the observations, it is observed in para 9 that “ if the procedure as suggested by the complainant is accepted, it would result into delaying trial of the complaint. If satisfied and if the Forum wants to invoke Section 25(1) of the said Act, then, property of the person responsible will have to be attached. Then, if attachment continues beyond the stipulated period, then, under section 25(2) of the said act, it will have to be sold. This shows that the procedure is full-proof, which requires a period, which an independent proceeding may consume. If, the proposal, as submitted by the complainant, is accepted, it would result into delaying the complaint proceeding. Needless it to say that it would cause injustice to the complainants and if, attachment is continued then, in that event, hardship would be caused to the person whose property is attached.”

           Having found that it is a time consuming process and the complaint can not be disposed of in stipulated period, it has been directed that complainant shall file an independent proceeding and the application is rejected.

           This approach is a hyper technical approach on the part of the District Forum. We can not forget that Section 13(1)(B) is a provision dealing with interim and interlocutory proceedings to be conducted by the District Forum or Consumer Fora.  It is further to be noted that U/s 13(1)(B) ad interim order can be passed and the same should be confirmed within a period of 45 days as per regulations issued by the National Commission. Thus, the confirmation of ad interim order or disposal of interim order is expected to be within 45 days and prior to disposal of complaint that is prior to 90 days

If there is an application U/s 25(1) read with 25(2) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 the Consumer Fora is supposed to attach the property on satisfaction of breach of interim orderand if breach of interim order Continues after three months, District forum may sell away the Attached property after following the  procedure of Natural Justice. Therefore, the first and the foremost duty of the District Forum is to find out before an attachment of the property that interim orders passed by the District forum have not been disobeyed and/or breach of the same has been committed. If there is no such breach, there is no necessity of attaching the property and subsequently selling it.

Secondly, for whatever reasons, if the District forum feels that a separate proceeding Under Section 25(1) is required, the complainant has made a prayer that his application U/s 25(1)(2) be separately numbered and processed for a separate orders. Therefore, that was possible for the District Forum. However, instead of giving direction to the Registrar to register said application as separate proceeding as Miscellaneous Application, the District Forum proceeded to reject the prayer. That part of the order is absolutely illegal. The District Forum has to keep in mind that we are quasi judicial authorities and the Consumer Protection Act has been passed so as to give relief to the consumers and not to create technical obstacles in the system. In fact, the order passed by District Forum suffers from non application of mind to the fact of the case. In fact, the complainant has taken every precaution to protect his proceeding but it is District Forum which has failed to exercise jurisdiction vested in it.

We are sorry to observe that the Civil Judges and District Judges who throughout their life have dealt with civil law are not changing their attitude and mindset and are still under the influence of the Civil Procedure Code. Therefore, such illegal orders are passed. Not only that, we also find that it is a case of non exercise of the jurisdiction vested in the Consumer forum. What we find that the order passed by the District Forum is not sustainable in law. Hence the order…

                                                ORDER

1.                     The Revision Petition is allowed. Order passed by District Forum and impugned in this Revision petition are hereby set-aside.

2.                     The District Forum is hereby directed that it shall not insist for separate application from the complainant. The application which has been filed and accepted under the complaint be numbered as application U/s 25(1) as an execution proceeding by directing the Registrar to give separate number to it and that application may continue simultaneously alongwith the complaint. Only because it is a separate proceeding, it should not be given separate dates and should not be dealt separately eventhough orders can be passed separately and the stages of the main complaint should not be disturbed because of this proceeding.

3.                     With these directions Revision Petition is disposed of.

Pronounced on 17/03/2011