SANJIB BANERJEE, J.

After the statute has baffled many a court to express divergent views, the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act in its amended form in Section 14 thereof falls for consideration.

2. The immediate grievance of the petitioners is in the District Magistrate, North 24-Parganas having passed an order on May 29, 2015 by which the district superintendent of police has been requested “to provide police assistance to the secured creditors for taking possession of the secured assets …” The schedule of assets is appended to the order of the District Magistrate of May 29, 2015.

3. The secured creditor, the second respondent herein, issued a notice to the first petitioner under Section 13(2) of the said Act of 2002 for the alleged failure of the first petitioner to repay a debt due of about Rs.11 crore. Such notice was issued on November 27, 2014, to which the first petitioner replied on January 19, 2015. The grounds cited by the first petitioner were rejected by the secured creditor’s letter of February 23, 2015. The petitioners say that in apprehension of the measures that the secured creditor may resort to upon dismissing the first petitioner’s reply to the notice under Section 13(2) of the said Act of 2002, the first petitioner instituted a suit in the Barasat court having jurisdiction over the secured asset against, inter alia, the secured creditor, seeking a decree for specific performance of the agreement by which the owner of the secured asset had promised to sell an identified space at the Axis Mall in Rajarhat to the first petitioner. The first defendant in such suit is the fourth respondent herein as the owner of Axis Mall. The present lessee of the space is another defendant to the Barasat suit. The petitioners claim that against a loan of about Rs.10 crore obtained by the first petitioner from the secured creditor, a sum of about Rs.11 crore has been repaid. The more substantial ground urged by the petitioners, relevant for the present context, is that the order impugned is without jurisdiction, inter alia, as the nature of the order passed is not one contemplated under Section 14 of the said Act of 2002 and that the District Magistrate failed to exercise a duty imposed on him by the statute in such official not inviting the first petitioner to a hearing or indicating in the impugned order that he was satisfied that the conditions precedent to the exercise of authority under such provision had been complied with.

4. In support of the petitioners’ case, a judgment reported at (2014) 6 SCC 1 (Harshad Govardhan Sondagar v. International Assets Reconstruction Company Limited) is cited for the apparent recognition therein that upon receipt of a written request under Section 14 of the said Act, the chief metropolitan magistrate or district magistrate is obliged to conduct a full-fledged hearing on the merits of the secured creditor’s claim upon notice to the borrower or any other person interested in the secured asset. The petitioners also rely on another recent judgment of the Supreme Court reported at (2013) 9 SCC 620 (Standard Chartered Bank v. V. Noble Kumar) wherein it has been observed that a person interested in a secured asset has no right to apply under Section 17 of the said Act of 2002 before a Debts Recovery Tribunal prior to being dispossessed from the secured asset. The petitioners contend that in view of such judgments, the impugned order could not have been passed without notice to the first petitioner and without hearing it.

5. The petitioners claim that, in any view of the matter, there cannot be any doubt that a person affected or immediately likely to be affected by any measure taken by a secured creditor under Section 13(4) of the said Act has to be afforded a forum to seek redressal of the perceived wrong. The petitioners insist that in Section 14 of the said Act not expressly prohibiting a hearing before the chief metropolitan m