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3. I have heard Mr. R. Chandrasekaran, advocate for the appellant and Mr. v. Girish Kumar, advocate for respondent No. 1-bank.

4. I have also gone through the proceedings and having given my thoughtful consideration to the submissions made by both parties at the Bar, in my view, the learned presiding officer has not committed any error.

5. In Miscellaneous Appeal M. A. No. 172 of 2004, the case of the appellant is that they are neither the borrowers nor the guarantors and unnecessarily they have been dragged into this litigation by joining them as party defendant No. 4. It is further their contention that the original application was filed by the bank against the other three defendants on December 11, 2001, and application to implead defendant No. 4/present appellant as party defendant No. 4 was made by the bank on December 23, 2002. It is submitted that cause of action, if at all, arose by virtue of the power of attorney executed by the original defendants in favour of the bank on December 19, 1998 and because of this, the application for impleading the appellant as party defendant is barred by limitation. It is further contended that the power of attorney, which authorised the bank to collect the money from the appellant, which was due and payable by them to original defendants was equitably assigned, which was not permissible. On these grounds, it is submitted that the learned presiding officer committed error in allowing the applicant-bank to implead the appellant as defendant No. 4 in the main original application.

8. As far as the point of equitable assignment was concerned, Mr. Girish Kumar for respondent No. 1-bank argued that the power of attorney executed by defendant No. 1 in favour of the applicant-bank amounted to a binding equitable assignment by way of security which was an actionable claim against the defendants and, therefore, it was in the fitness of things that defendant No. 4 was impleaded as a party defendant No. 4.

9. On the point of limitation, Mr. Girish Kumar for respondent No. 1-bank submitted that the Hon'ble Supreme Court in its decision reported in Pankaja v. D. Yellappa [2004] 4 CTC 231; AIR 2004 SC 4102, has categorically observed that jurisdiction of the court to allow amendment of pleadings is very wide enough to permit amendments even in cases where there has been substantial delay in filing such applications.

15. The submission made by the appellant's advocate with regard to non-permissibility of the assignment of payment also is erroneous. Recourse can be had to the judgment of this very Appellate Tribunal in which my predecessor the late Justice A. Subbulakshmy, in the case of Union of India v. Canara Bank [2002] 2 ISJ (Banking) 467 (SAT), has made observations in para. 7 with respect to assignment made through the power of attorney. She has observed that when the borrower executed power of attorney in favour of the bank to receive all the money due and payable by the appellant (Union Bank of India), this amounted to a binding equitable assignment which is an actionable claim and/therefore, the appellant was not entitled to withhold the entire amount covered under the four bills for a sum of Rs. 90,055.74.