Per Smt. Ranjana Desai, J.

1. The petitioner is a body corporate incorporated under the provisions of the Banking Companies Act, 1949, having its head office at 10, BTM, Sarani, Kolkata, and branch offices all over India, including one at Churchgate.

2. Respondent 1 is a partnership firm constituted under the provisions of the Indian Partnership Act and, the rest of the respondents are its partners.

3. The respondents have availed various loan facilities from the petitioner's various branches as per the details given in paragraph 3 of the petition. For securing the said loans, the respondents had mortgaged their two flats situate at Malbar Hill, Mumbai (for convenience, “the secured assets”).

4. It is the case of the petitioner that the loan account of the petitioner became irregular despite the efforts of the petitioner to regularise it and, hence, the petitioner declared the account of the respondents as Non Performing Asset (for convenience, “NPA”) on 31/3/2005.

5. According to the petitioner, on the date of declaring the account of the respondents as NPA, the outstanding amount payable by the respondents to the petitioner was Rs.1,59,