Court No. - 1
Case :- WRIT - C No. - 42463 of 2019 Petitioner :- Shobha Ranjit Shetty Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 3 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Rohan Gupta Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Kaushalendra Nath Singh
Hon'ble Ramesh Sinha,J. Hon'ble Ajit Kumar,J.
Supplementary affidavit filed today is taken on record.
Dr. D.K.Tiwari, learned Standing Counsel has also informed the Court that pursuant to the earlier order of this Court he had informed the District Magistrate concerned to communicate the pendency of writ petition to respondent no. 4 and in reply to the same, a letter has also come on his E-mail ID, however because of server not working, same could not be downloaded and printed.
Heard Sri Rohan Gupta, learned counsel for the petitioner and Sri K.N.Singh, learned counsel for respondent no. 4 and learned Standing Counsel for respondent nos. 1, 2 and 3.
Contention advanced on behalf of the petitioner is that petitioner is only Companies' Secretary in the Patel Engineer Ltd. which is only a share holding company in the Pan Realtors Pvt. Ltd. who is standing in dues in respect of lease rent towards respondent no. 4 and, therefore, the petitioner cannot be saddled with liability to make good outstanding dues of the Pan Realtors Pvt. Ltd.
Per contra, the argument advanced by learned counsel for respondent no. 4 is that Patel Engineering Ltd. is one of members of the consortium of the Companies and she being a Company Secretary, possibly for this reason, Collector has issued recovery against the petitioner but he could not show any permission of law to justify the impugned recovery against the petitioner.
Further, we find that the issue is no more res integra as it has come to be cconsidered and answered in the judgement of this Court dated 4.12.2019 passed in Writ Petition No. 33100 of 2019 (Rakesh Mahajan v. State of U.P. and Others), wherein this Court has summarized the legal position like as under:
"a) That a Company is a separate and distinct entity from its shareholders and directors.
b) Corporate veil can be pierced
(i) only in exceptional circumstances by the courts with caution and circumspection and in a restrictive manner.
(ii) For lifting of corporate veil it is essential that the case falls within the exceptions as elaborated and crstalised by Munby J. in Ben Hashem v Ali Shayif,[2008] EWHC 2380 and approved by the Apex Court in Balwant Rai Saluja (supra) and Arcelormittal India (supra)
(iii) Where the statute itself permits lifting of veil."
In such above view, this writ petition deserves to be allowed.
The writ petition accordingly succeeds and is allowed.
The recovery citation issued against the petitioner dated 12.09.2019 is hereby quashed.
However, we may observe that It is always open for the respondent no. 4 to pursue the remedy in accordance with law for realization of the outstanding dues of the premium amount of rent and lease against the defaulters.
Order Date :- 20.12.2019 Sanjeev
(Ajit Kumar,J.) (Ramesh Sinha,J.)