AUROMA COKE LIMITED Vs. STEEL AUTHORITY OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) BY virtue of the order of the Appeal Court dated 11th december, 2006 both the learned senior counsel, namely, Mr. Samaraditya Pal on behalf of the writ petitioners and Mr. Lakshmi narayan Gupta on behalf of the first four respondents herein (shortly called SAIL) made their respective submissions in Court.

(2.) SINCE the point of maintainability of this writ petition was raised by Mr. Gupta he made his submissions first in support of the preliminary objection raised by him that the writ petition is not maintainable at this stage and Mr. Pal made his submissions thereafter primarily contending that the writ petition is clearly maintainable.

(3.) HOWEVER, before Mr. Gupta, in fact, made his submissions on the question of maintainability of this writ petition, Mr. Pal pointed out that the preliminary objection as to the maintainability as raised on behalf of SAIL should be treated to be a plea of demurrer and as such SAIL had to show that the writ petition on the face of it is not maintainable as it does not disclose a cause of action of rather a cause of action recognized in law or that this Court has no jurisdiction to entertain this writ petition as the case may be. However, in considering the preliminary objection of maintainability the statements made in the writ petition are to be treated as correct or the allegations made therein must be taken to be true, in other words, it must be shown that the writ petition is not maintainable ex facie.