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2014 (8) TMI 1073 - HC - Indian LawsRefusing permission to engage advocate - Held that:- Here the proceeding is between a lender and a borrower, and a committee of the lender is to hear the borrower. The committee is not to decide any lis between the parties; nor is it to adjudicate any dispute; nor to inquire into any charge and record its findings. It is only to take a view on the appellant’s representation against proposal of the bank, based on its records related to the appellant’s loan account, to classify the appellant as a wilful defaulter. The lender is under an obligation to detect its borrowers who are in default on loan it has sanctioned. Whether a borrower is a wilful defaulter is to be ascertained first by the bank internally through its high officials who are to scrutinise the related records for classifying the borrower concerned. A borrower when declared a wilful defaulter is bound to face the penal consequences mentioned in the MC itself. The evident purpose of the hearing of the borrower is to ensure that the lender does not commit a mistake in identifying and classifying a borrower as a wilful defaulter. The appellant’s representation is that the bank has wrongly classified it as a wilful defaulter. The GRC of the bank supposed to examine the appellant’s case closely in the presence of the appellant that will be free to present its case over the course of hearing, is not, however, empowered to take down any evidence. Hence in ordinary cases absence of an advocate for the hearing purpose is not likely to defeat the purpose of the hearing. In this case we do not find any reason to say that the grounds stated by the appellant for permission to engage advocate to appear before the GRC for the hearing purpose have constituted a case that absence of the service of an advocate for the hearing purpose is likely to defeat the purpose of the hearing. We are therefore of the opinion that by refusing permission to engage advocate the bank did not commit any wrong, and that the single Judge has rightly dismissed the WP, though he has recorded a finding that the appellant is a defaulter on the loan, − not an issue in the WP, and made an assumption about the appellant’s representation ability, − an impermissible personal perception.
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