Delay – Refusal to condone – When justified – Delay of 5 years in filing the second appeal by the appellant-State – Not condoned by High Court, appeal dismissed – Challenged: Held: High Court rightly refused to condone the delay – Enormous delay occurred at every stage, from the date of receipt of the judgment passed by the First Appellate Court till the date of filing the second appeal by the State – When a case is filed beyond limitation, the petitioner has to explain the Court as to what was the “sufficient cause” which means an adequate and enough reason which prevented him to approach the Court within limitation – While a party is entitled to wait until the last day of limitation for filing an appeal but when it allows the limitation to expire and pleads sufficient cause for not filing the appeal earlier, the sufficient cause must establish that because of some event or circumstance arising before the limitation expired it was not possible to file the appeal within time – No event or circumstance arising after the expiry of limitation can constitute such sufficient cause – Enormous delay of 1788 days in filing the second appeal was not explained satisfactorily, no sufficient cause was shown for the same, and no plausible reason was put forth by the State – Petition dismissed, costs of Rs.1,00,000/- imposed on the State.[Paras 4, 5, 7, 8] Delay – In filing petitions/appeals/applications – Callous, lackadaisical attitude of Government officials – Loss to Government exchequer – Officers responsible for delay/lapses to be penalized – Enormous delay of 1788 days in filing the second appeal by the appellant-State involving valuable Government lands:
Held: State to streamline the machinery touching the legal issues, offering legal opinion, filing of cases before the Tribunal/Courts, etc. – States to fix the responsibility on the officer(s) concerned and penalize them, who is/are responsible for delay, deviation, lapses, etc., if any, to the value of the loss caused to the Government. [Para 6]
Delay – Condonation – “sufficient cause” – Interpretation: Held: The discretion to condone the delay has to be exercised judiciously based on facts and circumstances of each case – ‘sufficient cause’ cannot be liberally interpreted, if negligence, inaction or lack of bona fides is attributed to the party. [Para 5]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Divya Pandey. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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