July 17, 2018:

The Bench imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on the Hotel and directed it to deposit the amount within four weeks.

Bombay High Court has imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Hotel Leela Venture Limited for alleged "forum-hunting" by seeking that their pleas, challenging eviction proceedings initiated against it by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), may be heard by a single judge bench.

The Airports Authority of India AAI had, in February 2017, issued an eviction notice to Hotel Leela Venture, which runs a five-star hotel near the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, for non- payment of  rental dues.

The Airports Authority initiated the Court procedure to evict the hotel and reclaim 29,000 sq m land it stands on for non-payment of dues and flouting other terms of Lease agreements.

The Leela hotel company had then filed two petitions in high court -- one challenging the notice and the other against the eviction proceedings.

Leela had also filed an arbitration petition seeking to amicably resolve the dispute.

Initially, the Leela hotel's counsels sought for all the matters to be heard by a division bench.

These petitions were then placed before a division bench of Justices A S Oka and Riyaz Chagla.

However, the Leela hotel's lawyer, Deepak Khosla, said today that the arbitration petition can be heard only by a single judge bench ant that the arbitration petition should be transferred to a single judge bench and the other two petitions should also be clubbed along with it.

The DB, however, got angry with this and said earlier the hotel's lawyers had moved the high court's chief justice seeking for all petitions to be clubbed and heard by a division bench.

Bench said that this is a clear abuse of the process of law. This is forum-hunting (bench-hunting). We deprecate such behaviour by litigants.

The Div. bench imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on the hotel and directed it to deposit the amount within four weeks.

The High Court also vacated an interim relief granted by it earlier by which it had stayed the eviction proceedings initiated by the AAI against the hotel before an eviction officer.

Hotel Leela Venture had defaulted on payments and also violated certain other clauses in their agreement. The AAI had initially asked the hotel to repay dues or hand over possession of the land.

When the Leela company failed to do either, AAI issued the eviction notice and later initiated the eviction proceedings before the High Court.

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