Uttaranchal High Court: Lok Pal Singh, J. allowed a writ petition under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution for quashing the order passed by Civil Judge (Senior Division) while granting an ex-parte injunction in the favour of respondents and the order passed by IV Additional Sessions Judge while rejecting the appeal filed by the petitioners.
Respondents herein had filed a suit seeking a permanent/prohibitory injunction against the petitioners herein (defendants in suit) praying that they be restrained by decree of perpetual injunction from interfering in the daily affairs of respondents’ society. The trial court vide an ex-parte order granted a temporary injunction in the favour of the respondents and restrained the petitioners from entering, interfering or destroying the property in dispute. Aggrieved thereby, the petitioners herein preferred an appeal which was dismissed by the appellate court. Hence, the instant petition.
Rakesh Thapliyal, counsel for the petitioners submitted that the lower court had not recorded the reasons and directly came to the conclusion that, “in case ex-parte injunction is not granted, then the purpose of the plaintiff would frustrate” and thus passed the ex-parte injunction order. In support of his contention, he placed reliance upon the judgment in the case of Ramrameshwari Devi v. Nirmala Devi, (2011) 8 SCC 249, where it was held, “….the court should grant interim injunction or stay order only after hearing the defendants or the respondents..” On the other hand, V.K. Kohli, Senior Advocate appearing on behalf of the respondents contended that the property belonged to the institute and same should be protected.
The Court after perusing the impugned order observed, “the courts below have failed to exercise their jurisdiction within the parameters of law and the orders impugned in the present writ petition suffer from the aforesaid error.” It further observed that “The trial court granted ex-parte interim injunction without any discussion, finding and the reason, and the appellate court has also done the same.” For this, the Court also placed reliance on the case of the Supreme Court in State of Uttaranchal v. Sunil Kumar Vaish, (2011) 8 SCC 670, where it was held, “Judicial decisions must in principle be reasoned and the quality of a judicial decision depends principally on the quality of its reasoning.”
Thus, the Court set aside the impugned order holding the same to be unsustainable in the eyes of law and ordered the trial court to decide the interim injunction application within two months, after giving an opportunity of hearing to the parties.[Balwant Singh Chauhan v. Mahavidyalaya Sabha Jwalapur Haridwar, 2019 SCC OnLine Utt 360, decided on 14-05-2019]
