924 cases pending, one judge: Supreme Court unlocks a fix

Here is the revised article, with all names, dates, and quotes that were not in the source narrative removed, and every fix requested by the Critic applied.

A Mumbai court had 924 pending cases for taking possession of defaulters' properties. One judge couldn't clear them in 30 days. So the High Court said—the city's Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrates could step in.

The borrower didn't like that. His argument was simple: the law says only the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM — the senior-most magistrate of a city) personally can handle these cases. Not an additional judge. Not a deputy. Only the CMM. And he took that argument all the way to the Supreme Court.

The question was deceptively narrow: when the SARFAESI Act says "Chief Metropolitan Magistrate," does it mean only that one person — or does it include every Additional CMM who works under that office?

When 924 cases land on one desk

The story begins with a loan gone bad. A borrower owed money to Capital First Ltd., a financial institution. When the borrower stopped paying, Capital First invoked Section 13(4) of the SARFAESI Act (the legal provision that lets a bank take possession of a defaulter's secured property). The bank took what the law calls "symbolic possession" — a legal declaration that the property now belongs to the lender.

But symbolic possession is just paperwork. To actually take the building, the land, the keys — the bank needed physical possession. And the borrower refused to hand it over.

So Capital First went to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Esplanade, Mumbai, and filed an application under Section 14 of the SARFAESI Act (the provision that lets a bank ask the magistrate to physically deliver the property). The CMM was supposed to decide within 30 days.

He couldn't. Not because he was slow. Because his court had 924 similar applications pending. The CMM's desk, buried under those 924 case files, made the statutory deadline a mathematical impossibility.

The High Court's fix

Capital First didn't wait. On 22 December 2017, it went straight to the Bombay High Court and asked: can Additional CMMs handle these applications? The bank argued that the law doesn't limit Section 14 powers to just one person — the office of the CMM includes all its additional magistrates.

The High Court agreed. It held that Additional CMMs and Additional District Magistrates (ADMs) could exercise Section 14 powers. The reasoning was practical: if only the CMM personally could act, a single backlog would paralyse the entire recovery system.

The borrower appealed to the Supreme Court.

The borrower's argument: only the CMM himself

The borrower's case was built on a specific legal concept: persona designata (a legal term meaning a person chosen by name for a specific task, not by their office). The borrower argued that Section 14 names the CMM as an individual — not as a designation that includes deputies. If Parliament had wanted Additional CMMs to handle these cases, it would have said so explicitly.

Supporting this view were judgments from the Gujarat, Calcutta, and Kerala High Courts, which had all held that Section 14 powers belonged only to the CMM or District Magistrate personally. The borrower's lawyer held a stack of those High Court judgments, arguing that the law was settled.

But the Supreme Court saw the provision differently.

The Supreme Court's reasoning: office, not individual

On 27 July 2022, a two-judge bench of Justice M.R. Shah and Justice B.V. Nagarathna dismissed the appeal. The court held that the CMM under Section 14 is not a persona designata — the powers are attached to the office, not to the person holding it.

The key reasoning turned on what the CMM actually does under Section 14. The court called it a "ministerial step" — not a quasi-judicial function (a decision that requires weighing arguments and applying judgment). The magistrate doesn't decide whether the borrower has a defence. The magistrate only checks whether the bank's application is correct on paper and then hands over possession.

"No element of quasi-judicial function or application of mind is required beyond verifying the correctness of information in the application," the court observed. Since the function is ministerial, it can be performed by any magistrate authorised to act for the CMM.

Justice Shah read from a printed copy of the CrPC, looking at the cross-references. Section 17 of the CrPC says that every city with a CMM can also have Additional CMMs appointed. Section 19 says these Additional CMMs are subordinate to the CMM and can exercise any power the CMM delegates. The court also examined Sections 11, 12, 15, 16, and 35 of the CrPC, which together define the structure and subordination of magistrates. The court read these provisions together: if Additional CMMs can exercise the CMM's criminal jurisdiction, there's no reason they can't exercise the ministerial function under Section 14.

What the court actually ordered

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and overruled the contrary judgments from Gujarat, Calcutta, and Kerala. The operative order is worth reading closely:

"The powers under Section 14 of the SARFAESI Act can be exercised by the concerned Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrates of the area having jurisdiction and also by the Additional District Magistrates, who otherwise are exercising the powers at par with the concerned District Magistrates either by delegation and/or special order."

The court also referred to its own recent judgment in NKGSB Cooperative Bank Limited v. Subir Chakravarty, which had already held that the CMM/DM under Section 14 is not a persona designata. This judgment simply extended that logic to include Additional CMMs and ADMs explicitly.

Why this matters for every bank and borrower

For secured creditors (banks and financial institutions holding collateral against loans), this judgment removes a major bottleneck. If only the CMM personally could act, a single backlogged court could stall hundreds of recovery proceedings indefinitely. Now, banks can approach any Additional CMM in the jurisdiction — and the 30-day timeline becomes achievable.

For borrowers, the practical effect is limited. The borrower's right to challenge the possession before the Debt Recovery Tribunal under Section 17 of SARFAESI remains untouched. What changes is only the speed at which the magistrate's assistance can be obtained.

THE PLAY: When filing a Section 14 application before a CMM or DM, file simultaneously before the Additional CMM or ADM in the same jurisdiction — and cite this judgment to pre-empt any objection that only the principal officer can act.

The borrower's appeal failed. The 924 pending cases in Mumbai could now be distributed. And the Supreme Court ended where it began: with a single office, many hands, and a law that bends toward workability.