Order No. 4 date: 26-07-2017

Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

Record is put up today for passing order in respect of the delay condonation petition of the Appellants.

By such petition, it is stated by the Appellants that the concerned Ld. Advocate did not update them about the progress of the complaint case from time to time.  Secondly, the certified copy of the impugned order which was handed over by the concerned Ld. Advocate to the Appellants on 13-10-2016 got misplaced by the concerned person at Kolkata Office and the same could be located on 20-11-2016.  Thereafter, following due official procedure, the instant Appeal was filed.  Claiming that such delay was totally unintentional, the Appellants prayed for allowing the petition.

Heard the Ld. Advocates of both sides; gone through the material on record.

The impugned order was passed by the Ld. District Forum on 25-01-2016 and the instant Appeal was filed before this Commission on 15-02-2017, i.e., after the lapse of 355 days, excluding the statutory period of limitation.

In order show the bona fide of their delayed action, the Appellants mainly cited two reasons – (1) lackadaisical attitude of the concerned Ld. Advocate (2) misplacing of certified copy of impugned order.

Be it mentioned here that Advocate’s ground is no ground at all.  It is quite unexpected of any professional that despite receipt of due fees, one would take 8 months to handover certified copy of the impugned order to one’s client.  Ber that as it may, since it was a contested case, the Appellant cannot deny knowledge of pendency of the complaint case before the Ld. District Forum.  Given that all the daily orders as well as final order was duly uploaded in the Confonet website as per usual practice, if the Appellants had slightest inclination, they could easily keep a close tab on the day to day proceedings of the case from the comfort of their office and could even take a printout of the final order from the website itself in order to make up their mind.  Above all, although the Appellants accused the concerned Ld. Advocate of total non-cooperation, no material proof is furnished to substantiate such allegation.  Surprisingly, there is nothing to show that due clarification was sought for from the concerned Ld. Advocate for his belated action. 

It is further stated that the certificate copy of the impugned order was misplaced by the concerned person at Kolkata Office.  Going by the petition, it took more than a month to locate the certified copy of the impugned order.  One wonders, if it was indeed the case, what prevented the Appellants from obtaining duplicate copy of impugned order from the Ld. District Forum instead of wasting precious time in searching the misplaced certified copy.

Where the petitioner has not come with bona fide reasons to condone the delay, he is not entitled to be shown any indulgence.  The extent of liberal construction should not be such that it may totally ignore the public policy on which the law of limitation is founded and thereby defeat the very purpose of the law of limitation.  `Sufficient cause' has to be of the type, which is beyond control of the party invoking the provisions of section 5 of the Limitation Act. This is not the case here. In this regard, reference may be drawn to the decision of Hon’ble Supreme Court in the matter of Collector of Central Excise, Madras v. A.MD. Bilal & Co., reported in 1999 (108) Excise Law Times 331 (SC).

In view of the facts of the case and the above-cited judgment, we see no good ground to allow the instant petition. The petition lacks merit and accordingly, the same is dismissed.  Consequently, the appeal stands dismissed being hopelessly barred by limitation.