( 1 ) THE petitioner, who had made an offer for purchase of the assets of respondent No. 4 - M/s. Seema Ice and Cold Storage (P) Ltd. that were put to sale under Section 29 of the State Financial Corporations act, 1951 by the respondent Nos. 1 and 2 u. P. Financial Corporation, questions the entire decision making process of the finalization of the sale, made by the financial corporation in favour of respondent No. 3, on the ground that the decision of the respondent- financial Corporation is unreasonable, unfair and is non-transparent and is therefore liable to be struck down as being violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

( 2 ) THE matter was heard and an interim order was passed on 24-3-1995 calling upon the financial Corporation to file counter affidavit and it was directed that in the meanwhile the auction shall not be finalized without considering the objection of the petitioner. Pursuant to the said interim order, a decision was taken by the respondent financial Corporation on 22-4-1995 in the meeting of a Committee of the Corporation whereby it was resolved that since the Corporation had already entered into a lawful agreement with the respondent No. 3- M/s. Dass Cold Storage and Ice Factory through shri K. P. Agrawal, and since the said purchaser had already complied with the terms and conditions and possession has also been handed over to him, there was no ground for the Corporation to resume the proceedings. The Committee also recorded that the offer of the petitioner Shri Subhash Chand goyal was received "very late" i. e. on 14-3-1995 after the sale was finalized on 13-3-1995 in favour of the respondent No. 3, as such, it decided to reject the offer of the petitioner and refund the earnest money deposited by him. Thereafter, the Corporation appears to have executed a registered sale-deed on 5-7-1996 in favour of respondent No. 3. The aforesaid entire proceedings have also been challenged by way of ail amendment which amendment application had been allowed by this Court and accordingly the reliefs have been permitted to be amended. vide orders dated 6-8-1999 and 10-8-1999 respectively. A further amendment application was moved which was also allowed on 3-1 -2000 whereby the petitioner included relief praying for a mandamus commanding the respondents to accept the bid of the petitioner and reconvey the property in question to him.

( 3 ) A counter-affidavit has been filed on behalf of the respondent No. 3 - purchaser and 2 counter -affidavits have been filed on behalf of the financial Corporation; one sworn by Shri R. K. Srivastava which is counter-affidavit to the main writ petition and the other counter affidavit which was filed to the amendment sought by the petitioner sworn by Shri R. D. R. Pandey to which the rejoinder affidavits have been filed by the petitioner. An application along with a supplementary counter affidavit sworn by shri R. K. Srivastava dated 14-2-2000 has also been filed stating therein that the date of finalization of negotiation has been wrongly mentioned in the counter affidavit filed by him to the main petition and the same should be read in accordance with the date given in the supplementary counter affidavit.

( 4 ) THE writ petition, as is evident from the order sheet, was taken up for admission on several occasions and the orders were passed pertaining to the amendment and other pleadings in the year 2000. It appears that in order to effect service on the respondent No. 3, an order was passed on 29-11-2000. The array of parties, had originally in the writ petition, described respondent no. 3 as K. P. Agrawal, Dass Cold Storage, which was allowed to be amended vide courts order on 23-4-2001 and the respondent No. 3 was re-arrayed as M/s. Dass Cold storage Pvt. Ltd. through its Director Shri k. P. Agrawal. The writ petition was thereafter admitted on 15-5-2001 and notices were issued whereupon Shri Pradeep Kumar, advocate, and Shri V. B. Singh, Senior Advocate, appeared for t

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