A litigant who approaches the court with unclean hands, by concealing material facts, is not entitled to any relief.

ORDER :

1. Order dated June 23, 2020 passed by learned Single Judge has been impugned by filing the present intra-court appeal.

2. Sole argument raised by learned counsel for the appellant is that the writ petition was filed by the respondents concealing material facts regarding number of cases filed by respondent no. 5-the writ petitioner claiming the same relief which had travelled upto the Hon'ble Supreme Court. Some of the writ petitions filed subsequently were dismissed by this Court, the details thereof furnished by learned counsel for the appellant are as under:-

"I. Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 34874 of 2009

II. Special Appeal No. 864 of 2010

III. Special Appeal No. 1956 of 2011

IV. Special Appeal No. 1911 of 2011

V. Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 42424 of 2014

VI. Original Suit No. 26 of 2015.

VII. Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 47483 of 2014

VIII Special Leave to Appeal 3589 of 2018

IX. Writ-C No. 31196 of 2019

X. Special Appeal (Defective) No. 1175 of 2020"

3. Learned counsel for the respondent no. 5 tried to explain the facts stated in the writ petition. However, the only detail furnished therein is regarding civil suit filed by present appellant in the year 2008. Only copy of the order passed by the trial court has been annexed and no any other order passed in the aforesaid civil suit.

4. None of the order passed subsequently by the trial court was annexed. No details were furnished regarding filing of writ petitions, which were either decided or pending in this Court.

5. After hearing the arguments, in our opinion, the present appeal deserves to be allowed and the order passed by learned Single Judge set aside only on the ground that there was gross concealment of material facts from the Court when the writ petition was filed. As to how a litigant who conceals material facts from the Court, has to be dealt with, has been gone through by Hon'ble the Supreme Court time and again and the consistent opinion is that he is not entitled even to be heard on merits.

6. In Abhyudya Sanstha Vs. Union of India (2011) 6 SCC 145, Hon'ble the Supreme Court, while declining relief to the petitioners therein, who did not approach the court with clean hands, opined as under:

"18. … In our view, the appellants deserve to be non suited because they have not approached the Court with clean hands. The plea of inadvertent mistake put forward by the learned senior counsel for the appellants and their submission that the Court may take lenient view and order regularisation of the admissions already made sounds attractive but does not merit acceptance. Each of the appellants consciously made a statement that it had been granted recognition by the NCTE, which necessarily implies that recognition was granted in terms of Section 14 of the Act read with Regulations 7 and 8 of the 2007 Regulations. Those managing the affairs of the appellants do not belong to the category of innocent, illiterate/uneducated persons, who are not conversant with the relevant statutory provisions and the court process. The very fact that each of the appellants had submitted LPASW No. 82/2019 Page 7 application in terms of Regulation 7 and made itself available for inspection by the team constituted by WRC, Bhopal shows that they were fully aware of the fact that they can get recognition only after fulfilling the conditions specified in the Act and the Regulations and that WRC, Bhopal had not granted recognition to them. Notwithstanding this, they made bold statement that they had been granted recognition by the competent authority and thereby succeeded in persuading this Court to entertain the special leave petitions and pass interim orders. The minimum, which can be said about the appellants is that they have not approached the Court with clean hands and succeeded in polluting the stream of justice by making patently false statement. Therefore, they are not entitled to relief under Article 136 of the Constitution. This view finds support from plethora of precedents.

19. In Hari Na