JUDGMENT :

I. Introduction:

If law cannot give you what you seek, litigation will. The appellant, it seems, strongly believes in it and proves it right, too.

2. The appellant is a well-known—or is it notorious?—entity: Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL). It becomes a lessee in 1965; secures no registered lease deed; rather it fails “by inadvertence” to have the lease deed registered; continues as a lessee for twenty years, the originally agreed period; seeks extension but fails to get; then litigates for extension and loses; appeals and loses; and still appeals. All the while it holds on to the property. Now it has been a tenant for 55 years. It is on the strength of an unregistered lease deed. In other words, it is supposed to be a tenant for 30 days; that is all it gets as a lessee under an unregistered lease. But BPCL continues as a lessee for 55 years. Law gives it 30 days, and litigation stretches it to 20,075 days.

3. It pays to litigate, so BPCL litigates. Blissfully, it is a profit-making PSU; it can afford to litigate and engage its lessors across the country in a war of attrition. It tries to convert every case into Dickensian Jarndyce v. Jarndyce [Charles Dickens, Bleak House: That scarecrow of a suit. “Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties . . . without [their] knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.”]. Before decades, it has inherited many leases with the same terms; those leases expiring and extensions unavailable, it litigates. Courts across the country and the Supreme Court, too, interpret the same terms and render the same judgments: no extension for BPCL. But, undeterred, BPCL raises the same plea again and again, despite its losing cases, one too many. If not res judicata, those earlier decisions at BPCL’s own invitation become precedential estoppel.

Facts:

4. Appellant BPCL is a fully-owned Government Company and successor to Burmah Shell Oil Storage and Distribution Company of India Ltd. In February 1965, BPCL’s predecessor secured the suit property, an open plot of 14,550 sq. feet, on lease from the respondent owners. The annual rent was Rs. 3900/-and the period was 20 years. Though both the parties signed the lease deed, the lessee did not get it registered “by inadvertence.” Further, the “draft lease deed” contained, among other terms, a provision for renewing the lease for 20 more years after the expiry of the initial lease.

5. When the lease was subsisting, in 1976, under the Burmah Shell (Acquisition of its Undertakings in India) Act, 1976 (“Burma Shell Act”), the Company was taken over by the Government of India to form Bharat Refineries Limited, later renamed as Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, BPCL. Thus, the appellant Corporation has become the licencee. But the very next year, that is in 1977, the Owners filed RCS No.754 of 1977 against the Corporation for eviction. It was on the grounds of bonafide requirement, erection of unauthorized permanent structures, change of user, and unlawful sub-letting.

6. Pending that suit, the initial 20 years ended. So in January 1985, the Corporation is said to have notified the Owners with its demand for the renewal of the lease for twenty more years, as the unregistered leased covenanted. But the Owners refused to renew the lease; they cited, it seems, the pending eviction proceedings as the reason.

7. Then, the Corporation filed Regular Civil Suit No.256/88 before the Court of Civil Judge, Junior Division, Nashik, for specific performance and injunction. Later, the suit was renumbered as RCS No.1461/1995. Eventually, on the merits, the trial Court dismissed the suit with costs, through its judgment dt.7th May 2005. Aggrieved, the Corporation