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13. This Court distinguished between failure of an individual to act in a given time-frame and the time-frame provided to a public authority, for the purposes of determining whether a provision was mandatory or directory, when this Court held that it is a well-settled principle that if an act is required to be performed by a private person within a specified time, the same would ordinarily be mandatory but when a public functionary is required to perform a public function within a time-frame, the same will be held to be directory unless the consequences therefor are specified [Nasiruddin v. Sita Ram Agarwal, (2003) 2 SCC 577].