Withdrawal of Petition With Liberty To File Fresh One Cannot Be Allowed When It May Lead To 'Bench Hunting': Allahabad HC [Read Judgment]

Allahabad High Court dismissed a writ petition as "not maintainable" saying that allowing the writ petition would lead to a case of "Bench Hunting" by the petitioner.

Bench of Justices B. Amit Sthalekar and Piyush Agrawal in Dheer Singh & Another v. State of U.P. & 3 Others held that a petitioner cannot be allowed to file a writ petition seeking certain reliefs and then withdrawing the same with liberty to file fresh writ petition and again to file same relief before another Bench. Bench noted that same would lead to a case of "Bench hunting" by the petitioner.

Court found that relief claimed by petitioner in the writ petition before it was no different than the one earlier filed in which same petitioner was the party and that no new fact or relief have been claimed in the subsequent petition.

Earlier a writ petition titled Vijay Singh and Others v. State of U.P. with the same petitioner was dismissed by Division Bench of Allahabad High Court on 21st January this year. Both the petitions asked for same relief of direction in the nature of mandamus to the respondents to release the land in favour of petitioners alleged to be acquired by former by illegal acquisition.

Bench in the present case while dismissing the petition stated:

"In paragraph 22 of the present writ petition the stand of the petitioner is that he has not given any representation for release of his land and, therefore, his writ petition was wrongly dismissed as withdrawn. If that was the case that his earlier writ petition was dismissed wrongly as withdrawn the petitioner could have applied for the recall of the said order which would have been the proper course. The earlier writ petition was allowed to be withdrawn with liberty to challenge the order passed by the State Government on the representation of the petitioner under section 48 (1) of the Land Acquisition Act. […] we find that the relief claimed in the present writ petition is identical to that of the earlier writ petition and no new fact or relief has been stated in this writ petition."

[Read Judgment]