We had been running a IOCL petrol pump on our land from last 48 years, 3 years back we closed the business as the location of the petrol pump had become unviable. Susequently the dealership agreement between us and the Indian Oil corpoartion Ltd.(IOCL) was terminated by IOCL.
There was a clause in Dealership Agreement that " The company shall have right at any time during the currency of this agreement or within one month thereafter by notice in writing to require dealer to sell or assign according as the site may be held by the dealer or freehold or leasehold tenure, to the company or its nominee the site together with all building, structures and fixed assests and thereupon the dealer shall sell or assign the above immovable assests to the company for a price which shall be computed as follows: first a sum equivalent to such capital monies as the dealer may have paid by the way of premium or price as consideration for acquistion of the site. Second the deprciated value of the Buildings and fixed assests.
In the termination letter the IOCL has excercised its above right and asked us to sell the petrol pump land at our purchase price. The land was purchased in 1956 for a very nominale amount, so we have denied to sell the land to the IOCL. Now IOCL has invoked the arbritration clause in the dealership agreement for arbritation and the arbitrator will be IOCL official only as per agreement. The arbitration by IOCL will take more than 10 ten years to complete as per past records and the judgement by the arbitrator will always be in favour of IOCL as he is the company official and not a neutral person.
So what can we do to vacate our petrol pump land in which IOCL 's Dispensing units and underground tanks are stiil lying.
We have following options:
1. Go for Arbritration which will take more than ten years to complete and also the judgement will not be in our favour. then again we have to file an appeal in court againt the order of arbritrator.
2. Go to civil court and the court will advise that when there is a arbritration clause then first resolve the issue with arbritration.
3. File a writ petition in high court under art 226. In which the court may give relief from arbitration.
The above agreement is void according to Contract Act, Transfer of property Act, Specific relief act etc. But the IOCL only to harrass the dealers does not release the sites easily as it fears that if it releases the site so easily many petrol pumps will close so it fights till the end.
Kindly give us advise what to do and also details of any caselaws regarding this kind of case.
