Deliberate failure to disclose material facts regarding previous legal proceedings can lead to the dismissal of a subsequent petition as an abuse of the court process.

The petitioner claiming an allotment made by the respondent Development Authority has instituted these proceedings seeking the following reliefs:

“1. Issue a writ in the nature of Mandamus or any other appropriate writ; order or direction to the respondent and command them to issue a fresh schedule of the remaining payment to be made by the petitioner to the respondent and to execute the lease deed in favour of the petitioner, in respect of the allotted plot No. 122 in Pocket A of Sector 20 of Yamuna Expressway Development Area as per the rescheduled payment Scheme and hand over the plot No. 122 in Pocket A of Sector 20 of the residential scheme i.e. 2009 (1) to the petitioner.

2. Issue a writ of mandamus to the respondent no.1 to decide the representation of the petitioner dated 01.03.2016 as Annexure no. 16 to the petition.

3. Pass such other and further orders and/or such directions or directives as this Hon'ble Court may deem just and appropriate and as the circumstances of the case may warrant and award cost.”

2. In paragraph 1 of the petition it has been averred that this is the first writ petition for the relief claimed and that no other proceedings have been initiated earlier seeking same relief.

3. Learned counsel for the respondent Development Authority has raised a preliminary objection to the maintainability of the writ petition and submits that the averments made in paragraph 1 of the writ petition are patently false and that the petitioner is guilty of having suppressed material facts. Elaborating upon the said submission the learned counsel has referred to an earlier writ petition Writ C. No. 56676 of 2010 (Jaibir Singh Nagar v. State of U.P. and others) filed by the petitioner, which came to be dismissed as withdrawn on 16 September 2010. A Division Bench of this Court dismissed the aforesaid writ petition in the following terms:

“Heard learned counsel for the petitioner as well as learned Standing Counsel appearing for the respondent no. 1 and Sri Ramendra Pratap Singh, learned counsel appearing for the respondent no. 2 and have perused the record.

The case of the petitioner is that he was allotted a plot of land measuring 4,000 Sq. meters vide Allotment-cum-Allocation Letter dated 20th October, 2009 passed by the respondent no. 2. A payment schedule had been provided in the said allotment letter itself. As per the same, the petitioner was required to deposit allotment money and thereafter six monthly instalments regarding which the petitioner has already filed a representation before the respondent no.2.

After some arguments were advanced by the learned counsel for the petitioner, he made a request that the petitioner may be permitted to withdraw this writ petition.

This writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed as withdrawn without any liberty to file a fresh writ petition. No costs.”

4. Not disclosing the fact that the earlier writ petition had come to be dismissed as not pressed, the petitioner preferred a second writ petition Writ C. No. 62129 of 2010 (Jaibir Singh Nagar and others v. State of U.P. and another) which came to be dismissed as withdrawn on 8 October 2010 on the following terms:

“After some argument has been advanced by the learned counsel for the petitioner, he made a request that the petitioner may be permitted to withdraw this petition with the liberty to file fresh separate petitions on behalf of individual petitioners.

The prayer is allowed and the writ petition is dismissed as withdrawn with the aforesaid liberty.

This order has been passed in the presence of the learned Standing Counsel and Sri Ramendra Pratap Singh, learned counsel for the respondents.”

5. We find that the present petition is conspicuously silent on the filing of the earlier two writ petitions or the fact that they were got dismissed as withdrawn. The averment therefore, made in paragraph 1 of the writ petition is clearly incorrect and amounts to a deliberate failure to disclose material facts. We further note that the fi