FIRM ASHOK TRADERS Vs. GURUMUKH DAS SALUJA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted in both the SLPs.

(2.) The dispute is among 12 persons who are, or are alleged to be, or claim to be partners in the firm M/s. Ashok Traders, the respondent No. 1. These 12 private parties to the litigation can be grouped into three, for the sake of convenience. Gurumukh Das Saluja, Sanjay Chawla and Ajay Arora shall be collectively referred to as Group "A." Bhagwati Prasad Kulhara, Badri Prasad Jaiswal and Harprasad Jaiswal shall be referred to as Group "B." Rajesh Jaiswal, Ram Sewak Sharma, Baljeet Singh Bhatia, Rajendra Prasad Jaiswal, Anil Kumar Shrivastava and Sushil Kumar Shrivastava shall be referred to as Group "C."

(3.) M/s. Ashok Traders are in liquor trade. In the deed of partnership entered into on 27-2-2002 there were 7 partners including Bhagwati Prasad Kulhara and 6 others. The partnership firm was registered with Registrar of Firms. Six partners (i.e. other than Bhagwati Prasad Kulhara) retired from the partnership and a new partnership came to be constituted on 5-3-2002 evidenced by a deed of the even date wherein all the persons belonging to Groups A, B and C are partners. However, the names of the new partners were not communicated to the Registrar of Firms. This firm was awarded a liquor contract licence for Bhopal for the year 2002-2003 at a licence fee of Rs. 66.51 crores. The existence of these two deeds of partnership and the factum of the first one being registered and the second one being not registered with the Registrar of Firms are admitted facts. For convenience sake, we would refer to the partnership dated 27-2-2002 as Partnership I, the partnership dated 5-3-2002 as Partnership II and the alleged partnership dated 6-3-2003 as Partnership III.