- within Real Estate and Construction, Law Department Performance and International Law topic(s)
There comes a point in every commercial dispute where the courtroom stops being a refuge and starts looking like a mirror, reflecting not the injustice you claim, but the contractual mess you have made. Mansan Builders Private Limited hit that wall on 31 July 2026. The Delhi High Court, in a Division Bench order by Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Amit Mahajan, did not merely dismiss its writ petition. It delivered a cold, methodical reminder that Article 226 of the Constitution is not a repair shop for broken business deals, even when one party carries the Government of India letterhead.
The story had begun with genuine promise. Back in April 2024, the National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited , NBCC, the public sector giant , floated a Notice Inviting Offer for bulk sale of commercial space in a project at Sarojini Nagar, New Delhi. Mansan Builders jumped in. On 22 July 2024, it emerged as the successful bidder in the e-auction. An allotment letter followed on 31 August 2024, handing Mansan 598 retail and office units. By 6 March 2025, the company had signed an Agreement for Sale with the Union of India, the project promoter. NBCC, acting as the implementing agency, handled the operational end, marketing, collecting payments, coordinating with buyers. Mansan, for its part, claimed to have pumped in roughly Rs. 568.73 crores towards the sale consideration. NBCC itself acknowledged this figure in an email dated 5 March 2026.
Then the music stopped. NBCC contended that Mansan had repeatedly missed instalments. On 13 March 2026, it issued a notice demanding the outstanding amount with interest and made it clear that failure to pay would mean termination. That same day, NBCC put out a public notice warning prospective purchasers against dealing with Mansan. Less than a month later, on 8 April 2026, the axe fell. NBCC issued a withdrawal, cancellation, termination notice, wiping out the allotment.
Mansan did not take this lying down. It ran to the Delhi Real Estate Regulatory Authority, RERA , under Section 31 of the RERA Act, 2016. On 13 April 2026, RERA granted an interim status quo order. But that protection evaporated on 7 May 2026 when RERA vacated it. NBCC moved fast. On the very same day , 7 May 2026 , it issued a fresh Notice Inviting Offer, proposing to reauction the commercial units Mansan thought it already owned.
Here is where the litigation strategy gets interesting. Before filing the present writ petition, Mansan had already knocked on the High Court’s door once. It filed W.P.(C) No. 7184 of 2026, challenging both the termination and the fresh NIO. That petition was disposed of as withdrawn on 29 May 2026, with the Court allowing Mansan to submit a representation to the respondents. Mansan fired off its representation on 30 May 2026. Two days later, on 1 June 2026, it was back with the present writ petition , W.P.(C) No. 8118 of 2026 , claiming the representation had not been decided and fearing that third, party rights would crystallise through the reauction.
Before the Division Bench, Mansan threw everything it had. It argued that NBCC simply had no authority to terminate. Look at Clause 8.3 of the Agreement for Sale, it said , only the promoter, Respondent No. 1, could cancel an allotment. NBCC was just an implementing agency, a coordinator, a post office. It could not unilaterally kill a concluded contract. Mansan also complained that the termination was procedurally stillborn because no prior notice had been issued as the Agreement required, and because the accounts had never been reconciled. It denied wilful default, insisting that its inability to pay further instalments was caused by the respondents’ own failure to execute conveyance deeds in favour of purchasers who had already paid up. Without those deeds, Mansan could not transfer units, could not bring in fresh money, and could not meet its payment schedule. It also attacked the fresh NIO as mala fide, noting that it was issued while RERA’s interim status quo order was still operative.
The Union of India and NBCC pushed back hard. They pointed out that NBCC had acted as the implementing agency throughout the entire transaction, issuing allotment letters, demanding payments, coordinating deeds and Mansan had never previously objected to its authority. The termination notice, they emphasised, was issued by NBCC on behalf of the promoter. As for the default, they produced an undertaking dated 6 May 2025 in which Mansan had assured compliance with the payment schedule, only to default again. They also raised a jurisdictional objection: this was a purely contractual and commercial dispute involving disputed questions of fact, defaults, reconciliation, execution of conveyance deeds, which could not be adjudicated under Article 226. They further contended that the petition was an abuse of process, since Mansan was essentially reagitating the same cause of action as the earlier withdrawn petition without obtaining liberty to file afresh. To make matters worse, third party rights had already intervened; several units had been sold pursuant to the fresh auction.
The interveners, aggrieved purchasers, added another layer of toxicity. They alleged that Mansan had collected substantial sums from them, including approximately Rs. 160 crores, and had retained the money instead of remitting it to NBCC. They accused Mansan of approaching the court with unclean hands. They also pointed out that NBCC had, in fact, replied to Mansan’s representation on 1 June 2026, a fact Mansan had conveniently omitted.
The Court began its analysis by effectively killing the challenge to the fresh NIO dated 7 May 2026. The reauction had already been conducted. Ten units had been sold to third party purchasers who were not even parties to the writ petition. Mansan itself admitted it was not pressing the challenge regarding the already sold units. With the NIO rendered academic, what survived was the challenge to the termination notice dated 8 April 2026.
But the Bench was not willing to go there. It looked at what Mansan was really asking for , restoration of a terminated commercial contract, reinstatement of an allotment, and a determination of who breached what. This, the Court held, was squarely a private law dispute. The extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 226 is a public law remedy. It exists to ensure fairness in the exercise of statutory and public duties, not to referee contractual slugfests between the State and a private party. The mere fact that the Union of India or NBCC was on the other side did not magically convert a commercial disagreement into a constitutional question.
The Court also noted the factual quagmire. Determining whether Mansan had actually defaulted, whether the respondents had failed to execute conveyance deeds, whether accounts were properly reconciled, and whether the termination was contractually justified , all of this required appreciation of evidence, examination of documents, and reconciliation of competing factual claims. A writ court is not equipped to do this. It does not take evidence. It does not reconcile accounts. It does not decide disputed questions of fact. The presence of intervener claims, with allegations that Mansan had pocketed crores belonging to purchasers, only reinforced that this was a multi layered controversy unfit for summary adjudication under Article 226.
Then there was the chronology. The Court looked at the dates and saw a pattern it did not like. Mansan withdrew its first writ petition on 29 May 2026. It submitted a representation on 30 May 2026. It filed the present writ petition on 1 June 2026. When confronted with NBCC’s reply dated 1 June 2026, Mansan claimed the email had slipped into its spam or junk folder, which was why it only discovered the rejection on 8 June 2026. The Bench was unpersuaded. It held that this sequence reflected repeated, almost reflexive invocation of the extraordinary jurisdiction over substantially the same contractual dispute within days. A litigant, the Court observed, is expected to approach the Court with candour, not to treat Article 226 as a revolving door.
Accordingly, the Delhi High Court dismissed the writ petition. It held that the surviving dispute was essentially contractual and commercial, involving disputed questions of fact, and was therefore not amenable to adjudication under Article 226. The challenge to the fresh Notice Inviting Offer had lost its efficacy due to the intervention of third party rights. The Court expressly left open all rights and contentions of the parties on the merits, making it clear that Mansan was free to pursue remedies before the competent civil forum. All pending applications were closed.
The lesson here is as old as contract law itself, but it bears repeating in an era where every disappointed bidder runs to the High Court waving the Constitution. A termination notice under a commercial agreement may feel like an act of state aggression, but it is not. It is a private law event. And when the facts are disputed, the accounts are messy, and third party purchasers are screaming about their missing money, the writ court will not ride to the rescue. It will simply point to the door, the one marked "Civil Suit".
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