Order No.5        date: 09-07-2015

Ld. Advocates for the Appellant and the Respondent No. 1 are present.  The delay condonation petition is taken up for hearing.  Ld. Advocate for the Appellant submits that actually notice of the complaint case was received by their Berhampore office.  But, as the said office had no legal cell, the matter was referred to Kolkata office and as ill luck of have it, during transit, the whole lot of case related papers got lost, which finally resulted in ex parte hearing and passing of the impugned order by the Ld. District Forum.  They gained knowledge about the impugned order on 23-10-2014 after receiving copy of the impugned order forwarded by the concerned Ld. Advocate and they immediately swung into action and after complying with necessary official formalities, the instant appeal has been filed which resulted in the delay and there was no intentional laches on their part.  Ld. Advocate for the Respondent No. 1 vehemently objecting such petition submits that the Appellant was fully in the know of the instant case. There is nothing to condone the delay, which has not been sufficiently explained, neither, there is any day to day explanation and the petition itself is a mischievous one.  He cites a decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, reported in 2011 AIR SCW 1233 and two decisions of this Commission in FA No. 711/2014 and A/324/2015.

Considering the whole spectrum of the petition and other materials on record, we do not come across any reasonable and viable, let alone sufficient ground to condone the delay of 139 days beyond the statutory period of limitation in filing this appeal.  Laches on the part of the Appellant in contesting the case, since initiation of the complaint case is palpable beyond all reasonable doubt.  Accordingly, such huge delay in preferring the appeal is not condonable and the instant petition stands rejected.  Pursuant thereof, the appeal is dismissed being barred by limitation.