Mandatory personal hearing safeguards invalidate ex parte adjudication when no effective opportunity is granted before adverse order.

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....A personal hearing is a mandatory procedural safeguard before an adverse adjudication order under Section 73; where the date for hearing and reply filing are the same, the opportunity is not effective and violates audi alteram partem. Applying Mahaveer Trading Company, the High Court treated this defect as going to the root of the adjudication and held that the order could not stand. The impugned order was quashed and the matter remanded for fresh adjudication after granting a proper hearing.....