Claims must be filed within a reasonable time, even when no statutory time limit is specified by the Legislature.

( 1 ). All the aforementioned civil writ petitions are being disposed of by this common judgment.

( 2 ). The petitioner, M. S. Shoes East Limited, has filed 208 cases in the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (for short `commission ) in relation to deficiency of service by the underwriters/brokers who offered their underwriting and/or procurement services for the public issue of the complainant in February 1995.

( 3 ) THE public issue of the petitioner s company was floated on 14th February, 1995 and was closed on 18th February, 1995. However, as the subscription was below 90% within 30 days of the closing of public issue, the public issue devolved on the underwriters. The underwriters failed to make payment of the underwriting amounts within 30 days as a result of which within 60 days of the closure, petitioner M. S. Shoes could not collect 90% of the public issue amount. Under Section 69 of the Companies Act, 1956, if within 60 days at least 90% of the public issue amount is not procured by the company, either by subscription, by public and/or by devolvement, the money collected by the Company in the public issue is to be returned to the public. According to the petitioner, the underwriters failed to honour their underwriting commitments, the petitioner M. S. Shoes had to return the entire amount received from the public and consequently suffered heavy losses and damages due to non-performance of the under-writing obligations by the various respondents.

( 4 ) IN the underwriting agreements entered into with the respondents in the above cases, there was an arbitration clause in each of their agreements and as such the petitioner has filed petitions under Section 20 of the Arbitration Act, 1940 before this Court against the respondents being Suit No. 1299-A/97 and Suit No. 1199-A/98 against 269 underwriters which are pending adjudication by the Court.

( 5 ) THE petitioner has filed a large number of compensation applications under Section 12b of the MRTP Act before the Commission. The compensation applications were filed after more than five years after the cause of action arose to the petitioner. On 19th September, 2002, the Commission by a common judgment decided 189 compensation applications.

( 6 ) THE respondents herein have taken two main objections with regard to the maintainability of this petition: (i)that the petitioner cannot be permitted to initiate parallel proceedings in two Forums; (ii)the compensation petitions filed by the petitioner have been preferred beyond reasonable period of three years and it has to be held to be time barred.

( 7 ) THE Commission has rejected the preliminary objection of maintainability of the writ petition on the strength of a large number of judgments delivered by the Apex Court.

( 8 ) THE short question which arises for consideration of this Court is, whether the Commission was justified in dismissing the petitioner s petition as barred by limitation?

( 9 ) THOUGH the Commission has dealt with a large number of judgments but the main reliance has been placed on the judgment of the Apex Court delivered in Corporation Bank and Anr. vs. Naveen J. Shah, reported in (2000) 2 SCC 628.

( 10 ) MR. Rajeev Nayar, Sr. Advocate canvassed main submissions on behalf of the petitioner and on behalf of the respondents, main submissions have been addressed by Mr. Manmohan, Mr. U. K. Chaudhary, Senior Advocates and by Mr. Jay Salva and Ms. Ritu Singh Mann, Advocates. It has been canvassed that the present writ petition filed by the petitioner is not maintainable as Section 55 of the MRTP Act 1969 provides for an appeal to the Supreme Court and the present petition is liable to be dismissed only on that ground itself as there is an efficacious alternate remedy available to the petitioner.

( 11 ) IT is further submitted by the respondents that the impugned judgment of the Commission has correctly upheld the preliminary objection with regard to the maintainability of