This Revision Petition under Section 21(b) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (for short “the Act”) has been filed by the opposite parties, namely, Department of Posts, Union of India and its functionaries, against order dated 12.6.2012, passed by the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Maharashtra (for short “the State Commission”), in FA/11/740.  By the impugned order, the State Commission has dismissed the appeal as barred by limitation, as the petitioners had failed to comply with its earlier conditional order dated 31.1.2012, condoning delay in filing of appeal.  The operative part of the order reads as under :

“Heard Adv. Lata Patne on behalf of the Appellants and Adv. N. K. Bhog on behalf of the Respondent on the application for condonation of delay. By a separate order passed on 31/1/2012, delay in filing appeal stands condoned. Subject to fulfillment of condition as regards payment of costs list these two appeals for hearing on admission on 12/06/2012.”

        At the outset, we may note that in the said appeal the petitioners had questioned the correctness of order dated 7.7.2011, passed by the Pune District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum in C.C. No.PDF 343/2008, inter alia, directing the Postal Department to pay interest on the amounts deposited by the complainant periodically in her Public Provident Fund Account.  The petitioners had refused to pay interest on the sole ground that the said account was opened by the complainant through an attorney, which was not permitted.

        It is pointed out by the office that there is a delay of 134 days in filing the present Revision Petition.  Application praying for condonation of the said delay has been filed along with the Revision Petition.  The application runs into a number of pages, but lacks plausible cause which could be held to be sufficient to condone the said inordinate delay.  As usual, the explanation furnished is the narration of dates showing the movement of file of the case from 21.8.2012 to 14.3.2013 from the office of the Postmaster General (Pune) to the Ministry of Law; their counsel, Senior counsel at Mumbai and Sr.Postmaster, Pune. 

Having heard the learned counsel, we are of the opinion that the petitioners have failed to make out a sufficient cause for condonation of delay and the application merits rejection.  In this behalf, the following observations of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of the petitioner department itself in Postmaster General & Ors. vs. Living Media India Ltd. & Anr. – (2012) 3 SCC 563 are quite apposite :

“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 bonafide 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 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 the government departments. The law shelters everyone under the same light and should not be swirled for the benefit of a few.”

Regretfully, these observations has had no effect on the functioning of the petitioner department.

Bearing in mind the observations of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Anshul Aggarwal vs. New Okhla Industrial  Development  Authority – (2011) 14 SCC 578,  to the effect that the entire object of expeditious adjudication of the consumer disputes gets defeated if belated appeals and revisions are entertained,  we decline to condone the inordinate delay of  134 days in filing of this Revision Petition.  Consequently, the Revision Petition is dismissed on the ground of limitation.