Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, June 10: The High Court today rapped the Government for putting the Court decisions on shelves and challenging them after a great delay without giving any logical reason for it making public to suffer.
Court was hearing an appeal filed by the Education Department challenging an order passed in 2017. The Department had filed Letters Patent Appeal and the Division Bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rashid Ali Dar dismissed it for challenging the Court order after one and half years.
The DB noted that this is not the only case where similar unexplained delay has been placed before the Court and for all the reason given by the State dismissed the application seeking condoning the delay in filing the appeal with costs of Rs 25,000.
“These costs shall be apportioned between the respondent and the Advocates Welfare Fund. The costs shall be paid within four weeks from today. It is made clear that these costs are in addition to the costs imposed by the Single Judge”, the DB recorded.
Court said, it has been noted that on account of impersonal machinery and the inherited bureaucratic methodology imbued with the habit of note-making, file pushing and moving the files from table to table, unfortunately the matters are delayed on the part of the State.
“It is well recognized that the State represents collective cause of the community. Judicial precedents have observed that the decisions are taken by officers/agencies proverbially at slow pace and the encumbered process for moving the files from table to table and keeping of files on the table for considerable time causing delay intentional or otherwise, is a matter of routine. The courts are not immune from granting latitude and condoning the delay which had occurred on the part of the State because of the public interest which suffers”, the Court said.
It has been pointed out before the Court that even after obtaining sanction from the Law Department on October 2018, the State has taken 5 months before filing the appeal on 14th February, 2019.
It has been urged by the other side that no explanation at all has been tendered in the application seeking condoning the delay which could justify the time which the applicants have taken in filing the appeal and not a single relevant date which could enable this Court to conclude that the delay was not willful or intentional or that the applicants have acted bona-fide, has been put on record.
It is high time, Court said, that a method for strict scrutiny was adopted by the Law Department. “We see no reason as to why an electronic file cannot be created in a tabulated format containing details of the case; date of the judgment and dates of its processing till compliance / filing of appeal. Even the appeal needs to be similarly tracked. Colour coding to track urgency may be adopted”, Court said.
“Let an action taken report in this regard be filed by the Principal Secretary, Department of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, J&K Govt before us within four weeks. Let a copy of this order be sent to the Chief Secretary, Government of J&K State, by the Registry”, Court directed.
“We cannot lose site of the fact that such delay may actually be actuated by collusion and mala fides. Therefore, the Secretary of the Department concerned should examine every file where a decision is taken to file an appeal where delay is occurred and proceed in the matter against the officer responsible for the same. Such negligence and non-action is resulting in wastage of huge amounts of public funds as well as valuable judicial time”, DB further added.
Court also found that the State has not cared to give any explanation for the delay which has been occurred in filing the appeal on time so that the court could have been persuaded to take a lenient view in the matter.
Court made it clear that the law mandates that explanation for each day of delay has to be given. “It is trite that the circumstances in which delay in filing the appeal stands occasioned have to be carefully explained”, it said.
“The present application has been filed on the presumption that a liberal view would be taken and no explanation at all would be warranted. The applicants appear to have presumed that the applicant would meet no resistance from the respondent”, DB recorded.
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