Madhya Pradesh High Court
State Of M.P. & Ors. vs Amritlal Kadam on 15 September, 2014
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Writ Appeal No.349/2009
15.09.2014
Ms. Mini Ravindran, learned Deputy Government Advocate
for the appellant / State.
Heard on IA No.7990/2009, an application seeking
condonation of delay in filing the appeal.
The delay is of 828 days.
Following is the explanation offered in the application for
condonation of delay: -
"It is most humbly submitted on behalf of the
appellants as under: -
1. That the appellants have preferred the
Writ Appeal before this Hon'ble Court being
aggrieved by the order dated 03.05.2007
passed in W.P. No.1500/2007 (s) by Hon'ble Writ
Court allowing the petition, of the respondent.
2. That the said petition was decided on 03.05.2007, and after receiving the certified copy of the order by the OIC of the case, the department sought the opinion of the Government Advocate. The opinion was received and thereafter the Officer In-charge of the case sent the case of the respondent along with the opinion to the higher authorities at Bhopal for seeking the necessary sanction to file the writ appeal.
Thereafter, the Law Department granted permission to file Writ Appeal in the matter and Officer In-charge of the Case received the said permission through proper channel on 10.09.2009.
4. That after receiving the permission from the Law Department by the OIC on 10.09.2009, the Officer in Charge of the case collected the record of the case and contacted to the Advocate General Office for Writ Appeal, where 2 the record of the case was perused and appeal was drafted without any further delay. It is most humbly the delay of 860 days is caused due to official procedure and legal formalities, which is bonafide and deserves to be condoned in the interest of justice."
Having gone through the aforesaid reasons, we find that the explanation seeking condonation of such a huge delay is not satisfactory.
The Supreme Court in the case of Office of the Chief Post Master General v. Living Media India Ltd. AIR 2012 SC 1506 after examining the affidavit of the person-in-charge of the case to justify the delay found that there was delay at every stage with no explanation for the cause of delay. The Supreme Court also took serious note of the casual manner in which the Government departments are functioning showing virtually no respect to the law of limitation. And, while dismissing the appeal on the ground of delay, which was of 427 days, the Supreme Court has made the following observation: -
"The claim on account of impersonal machinery and inherited bureaucratic methodology of making several notes cannot be accepted in view of the modern technologies being used and available. The law of limitation undoubtedly binds everybody including the Government.
In our view, it is the right time to inform all the Government bodies, their agencies and instrumentalities that unless they have reasonable and acceptable explanation for the delay and there was bona fide effort, there is no need to accept the usual explanation that the file was kept pending for several months/years due to considerable degree of procedural red-tape in the process. The Government departments are under a special obligation to ensure 3 that they perform their duties with diligence and commitment. Condonation of delay is an exception and should not be used as an anticipated benefit for Government departments. The law shelters everyone under the same light and should not be swirled for the benefit of a few."
The aforesaid view has again been affirmed by the Supreme Court in case of State of Uttar Pradesh v. Amar Nath Yadav [(2014) 2 SCC 422].
Having gone through the aforesaid judgment, we are of the view that there is no justification to condone such a huge unexplained delay. The application is, therefore, rejected.
However, we have also gone through the merits of the matter.
We find that the learned Single has decided the writ petition in the light of the order passed by this Court in the case of Smt. Prerna v. State of MP and others in Writ Petition No.6773/2006 (s).
It has not been disputed by the learned Deputy Government Advocate that the order passed in the case of Smt. Prerna Koranne (supra) has been affirmed by a Division Bench of this Court in Writ Appeal No.658/2007 (State of MP & others v. Smt. Prerna w/o Pramod Koranne) decided on 18.12.2008 and the said order has attained finality and thereafter also large number of writ appeals of the State have been dismissed.
In the circumstances, on the ground of limitation as also on merits, the appeal deserves to be and is hereby dismissed.
(Shantanu Kemkar) (Jarat Kumar Jain)
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Judge Judge
Pithawe RC