The main legal point established in the judgment is that a false statement regarding a material fact amounts to fraud and justifies the termination of a contract.

JUDGMENT

Ashutosh Kumar, J. - The petitioner, which is a Gas Agency since 2009 and is being run under the name and style of M/s Gauri Shankar Indane Service, Kuchaikote in the District of Gopalganj for the respondent/Indian Oil Corporation (in short the Corporation), has approached this Court for the following reliefs:

(A) A writ in the nature of Certiorari or any other appropriate writ/s, order/s, direction/s quashing the following:

RELIEFS

(i) Letter of Termination dated 30.12.2019 (hereinafter referred as 'impugned order') issued by Respondent No. 2 whereby and whereunder the distributorship of the Petitioner has been terminated with immediate effect without considering the fact that earlier in 2009, the inspection of bank statement of the Petitioner has already been done by two senior officers before issuance of LOI and the issues raised in reply dated 18.10.2019 filed by the Petitioner.

(B) A writ in the nature of mandamus or any other appropriate writ/s, order/s, direction/s commanding the Respondents for the following:

(i) To restrain the Respondents from giving effect to the Order contained in Annexure-20 to the petition.

(ii) To restrain the Respondent from interfering with running of M/s. Gauri Shankar Indane Services (229618) at Kuchaikot, Gopalganj by the Petitioner and by commanding the Respondents to discharge all duty enjoined upon them which the Respondents are under obligations to discharge the duties for running of their agencies.

(iii) To hold the Order of Termination to be nullity and non est in the eye of law.

(C) To any other relief/s to which the Petitioner is found entitled to.

2. During the pendency of the aforesaid writ petition, an interlocutory application vide I.A. No. 1 of 2020 was filed seeking, if at all it were required by this Court, an inquiry by a neutral body which is neither associated with the respondent/Corporation nor with the Siwan Co-operative Bank.

3. This Court, while hearing the writ petition, had passed detailed orders on 17.01.2020 and 21.01.2020 respectively, which incorporate the submissions advanced on behalf of the parties. In order to avoid any repetition of facts, the orders referred to above are being extracted hereinbelow for the sake of completeness:

17.01.2020: Heard Mr. Binod Kanth, learned senior advocate for the petitioner and Mr. Anil Kumar Jha, learned senior advocate for the respondent/Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.

The agreement between the petitioner and the respondent/corporation has been terminated on the charge of the petitioner having given a wrong information at the time of grant of Letter of Intent (LOI) in the year 2009 about his financial strength. Against an advertisement which was issued sometimes in the year 2007 asking for such applicants who fulfilled necessary conditions for being chosen as Retail Outlet Dealers with a premium to freedom fighters, the father of the petitioner applied and his candidature was accepted. However, a day after the Letter of Intent was granted to Late Mr. Gauri Shankar Pandey, freedom fighter of his times, he died on 31.10.2008.

In accordance with the guidelines of the I.O.C.L., in case of death of a licensee, the provision for making inquiries about the heir of such licensee was invoked. Though the petitioner who is the son of the original licensee wanted the license to be transferred to him but he was subjected to the rigors of an inquiry with respect to other technical qualifications for which he had to be responsive. One of the conditions was that he, too, at the relevant time had sufficient financial strength for being chosen as a concessionaire.

The petitioner claimed that he had an amount of Rs. 20,40,000/- parked in a cooperative bank on the day of the advertisement. This statement was verified through a procedure which is known as "field investigation" whereafter the "field investigation" report was submitted.

Mr. Kanth, learned senior advocate has shown to this Court that the "field investigation" report confirmed i