Late Shri Parmeshwar Prasad, husband of the complainant opened a recurring deposit account with Union Bank of India, Deoria, whereby he was to deposit Rs.2,000/- per month under the Union Insured Recurring Deposit Scheme of the said Bank.  As per the terms of the scheme, the Bank was to pay the entire maturity amount in the event of the death of the depositor before the deposit had matured.  The contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that in fact the difference between the amount available in the recurring deposit account and the matured amount was to come from LIC of India.  The complainant was the nominee of her husband in the said account.  The husband of the complainant died on 03.01.96.  After his death, the complainant requested the Bank to make payment in terms of the aforesaid scheme.  Responding to her notice, the Bank claimed that they had been paying premium to LIC on regular basis but the LIC was not making the requisite payment.  Alleging deficiency in service on the part of the opposite parties, the complainant approached the concerned District Forum seeking the maturity value of Rs.2,08,954/- besides legal expenses amounting to Rs.546/-.

2.       The petitioner Bank contested the complaint on the same ground on which it had responded to the notice received from the complainant.

3.       The District Forum vide its order dated 10.02.2009 directed the petitioner bank to pay a sum of Rs.2,09,500/- alongwith interest @9% p.a., besides cost of litigation amounting to Rs.1,500/-.  It was held by the District Forum that this being a group insurance, there was no contract between the deceased and the LIC though there was such a contract between him and the Bank and, therefore, the complainant was entitled to recover the amount in question from the petitioner Bank.

4.       Being aggrieved from the order of the District Forum, the petitioner approached the concerned State Commission by way of an appeal.  However, the said appeal came to be dismissed for default vide an order dated 29.08.2012.

5.       Being aggrieved from the dismissal of its appeal, the petitioner Bank is before this Commission by way of this revision petition.  Since there is a delay of 653 days in filing the revision petition, I.A. No. 6182/2014 has been filed for condonation of delay in filing the revision petition.

6.       It is stated in the application seeking condonation of delay that the lawyer whom the Bank had appointed to prosecute the appeal before the State Commission was lax and negligent in performing his services and, therefore, he has been removed from the panel.  It has further been stated in the application that the petitioner Bank was neither aware of the matter being listed before the State Commission nor did it come to know of having its been dismissed for default.  According to the petitioner Bank, it was in July 2013, that it came to know that the lawyer was not attending to the cases entrusted to him and thereafter the file was taken back from him and entrusted to another Advocate.  It is further stated that the new Advocate tried to find out the fate of the case but Registry of the State Commission could not locate the file, which ultimately was traced only during summer vacations of 2014.

7.       During the course of hearing, I asked the learned counsel for the petitioner as to what action has been taken against the Advocate, whom it had engaged to prosecute the appeal before the State Commission.  The learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that he was removed from the panel of the Bank.  However, no complaint to the Bar Council was made against the said Advocate.  More importantly, the officials of the Bank could not have left the matter entirely to the Advocate after instructing him to file the appeal.  The Bank officials were expected to remain regularly in contact with the Advocate and ascertain the progress of the appeal from him from time to time.  Had that been done, they would have come to know that the counsel had stopped appearing before the State Commission, which, in turn, would have prompted them to entrust the file to another Advocate.  That having not been done, the bank officials were clearly negligent in performing their official duties.

8.       Even as per petitioner’s own case in July 2013, the Bank had come to know that the lawyer in question had not been prosecuting the matter entrusted to him and therefore, they entrusted the matter to another Advocate Mr. Rajesh Chadha.  The plea taken by the Bank is that the Registry of the State Commission was not able to locate the file of the case which eventually came to be traced only during the summer vacations of 2014.  No affidavit of Mr. Rajesh Chadha, Advocate has been filed in support of the aforesaid assertion made in the application.  It is otherwise unacceptable that the Registry of the State Commission would not be able to trace the file for as much as for one year at a stretch.  If that was the case, the petitioner Bank should certainly have made a complaint to the President of the concerned State Commission on the administration side, requesting him to direct the Registry of the State Commission to trace the file in question. That obviously does not seem to have been done.

9.       Though, according to the petitioner, the file was traced by the Registry of the State Commission during the Summer Vacations of 2014 which would mean in June 2014 the revision came to be filed only in September 2014.  This clearly shows that even after the file had been traced, no immediate steps were taken by the petitioner Bank to challenge the order of the State Commission.

10.     One of the objectives behind enactment of Consumer Protection Act is to grant expeditious relief to the consumer and that is why the act enjoins upon the consumer forum to decide the complaint, as far as is possible within the period of three months.  The aforesaid objective, in our opinion, cannot be achieved, if we condone the delay as a matter of course, without a satisfactory explanation for the delay having been given.

11.     For the reasons stated hereinabove and also considering the nature of the complaint where there is an admission that the amount claimed by the complainant is payable to her and the dispute is only as to whether the payment has to come from the Bank or from the LIC, I am not inclined to condone the abnormal delay of 653 days in filing the revision petition.  The application is accordingly dismissed.  As a consequence, the revision petition is dismissed as barred by limitation.  It is, however, made clear that if the Bank feels that the amount in question was required to be paid by the LIC and not by them, nothing prevent them from making the payment to the complainant and thereafter suing the LIC for recovery of the amount in accordance with law.