Collusive Litigation:
The Supreme Court has taken a suo motu cognisance of “collusive litigations” by officials of the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) recently.
- It is defined as a lawsuit where the parties involved are not genuinely adversarial, but rather cooperate to achieve a desired outcome or to challenge the constitutionality of a law.
- These suits often involve a degree of cooperation between the parties, who may share a common goal or interest in the outcome.
- The potential for abuse, where parties may collude to manipulate the judicial process or achieve an outcome that might not be possible through other means.
- The risk of undermining the adversarial system, where the court’s decision is based on a genuine dispute between parties.
- The potential for collusive suits to be used as a means of circumventing the normal legislative process.
- In India, collusive decrees can be set aside if the party challenging the decree is not a party to it and can prove collusion or fraud.
- The High Court has the authority to intervene in cases where a decree is found to be collusive, particularly under Article 227.
- A party to a collusive decree cannot seek to have it set aside. This principle is established in various cases where the courts have ruled that only parties not involved in the collusion may challenge the decree.
- The burden of proving that a decree was obtained collusively lies with the party seeking to set it aside.
- Courts have held that under a general prayer for relief, they can set aside a decree if it is found to be collusive, even if a specific prayer for setting aside was not made.
