JUDGMENT :

Bhaskar Bhattacharya, J.

By this Public Interest Litigation, the writ-petitioner, which is an organisation functioning for the welfare of consumers and registered under the Gujarat Co-Operative Societies Act, 1961 and the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950, has prayed for a direction upon the respondent No.2, the District Magistrate, Ahmedabad, to dispose of all the applications under Section 14 of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 [“the Securitisation Act”] by Banks and Financial Institutions within a time-bound programme strictly in accordance with the law laid down by a Division Bench of this Court in the case of IDBI Bank Ltd. v. Hytaisun Magnetics Ltd & Ors. in Special Civil Application No. 15084 of 2010 reported in AIR 2011 GUJ. 129. The petitioner has also prayed for a direction upon all Executive Magistrates/District Magistrates that applications under section 14 of the Securitisation Act should be decided in the light of the aforesaid decision of the Division Bench of this Court.

2. According to the writ-petitioner, the District Magistrate has no right to issue any notice for adjudicating the application under Section 14 of the Securitisation Act and the same is against the decision dated 9th February 2011 of the Division Bench of this Court in the case of IDBI Bank Ltd. v. Hytaisun Magnetics Ltd & Ors. in Special Civil Application No. 15084 of 2010 reported in AIR 2011 GUJ. 129.

3. The District Magistrate, Ahmedabad has filed an affidavit-in-reply and according to it, there are 69 applications pending before it as on 17th April 2012. It is further stated in the affidavit that the District Magistrate, while disposing of the applications under section 14 of the Securitisation Act calls for records/documents to verify basically the following two aspects:

(1) The place where the property is situated; the said aspect is necessary for the District Magistrate to consider, for the reason that the order under section 14 has to be with respect to the property situated within the jurisdiction of the District Magistrate.

(2) The District Magistrate verifies the ownership of the property against which order under section 14 is to be passed, to be more precise, District Magistrate verifies that the property belongs to the loanee against which an order under section 14 is required to be passed.

4. We have heard the learned counsel for the parties and after going through the materials on record, we find that in the past this very Division Bench in the case of Mansa Synthetic Pvt. Ltd. & Ors. v. Union Of India & Anr. in Special Civil Application No. 1829 of 2012, while dismissing an application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India challenging the validity of section 14 of the Securitisation Act, arrived at the following conclusions:-

“20. Our final conclusions are summarised thus :

(i) Section 14 of the Act is a valid piece of legislation and is declared intra vires.

(ii) The District Magistrate or Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, as the case may be, is bound to assist the secured creditor in taking possession of the secured assets and is not empowered to decide the question of legality and propriety of any of the actions taken by the secured creditor under Section 13(4) of the Act.

(iii) Though Section 14 of the Act provides that no act of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate or District Magistrate done in pursuance of Section 14 shall be called in question in any Court or before any authority, the right of judicial review under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India cannot be taken away, but that power can be exercised only in cases where the concerned Magistrate or the Commissioner, as the case may be, exceeds his power or refuses to exercise his jurisdiction vested in him under the law.

(iv) Absence of an appeal does not necessarily render the legislation unreasonable as only because no appeal is provided under the Act against the order passed under