Union of India & Ors Vs.
Visveswaraya Iron & Steel Ltd. [1986] INSC 249 (24 November 1986)
BHAGWATI, P.N. (CJ) BHAGWATI, P.N. (CJ) MISRA
RANGNATH
CITATION: 1987 AIR 669 1987 SCR (1) 367 1987
SCC Supl. 192 1986 SCALE (2)1253
ACT:
Practice and Procedure--Delay in filing the
Special Leave Petition not explained in the petition--Party desiring to file a
supplemental affidavit to explain it, when the case is called for, after a
lapse of nearly two years, hearing-Delay cannot be condoned--Supreme Court
Rules, 1966, Order XLVII Rule 1 read with Section 5 of the Limitation Act.
HEADNOTE:
Dismissing the SLP and CMP, the Court,
HELD: In the absence of any ground having
been made out in the application for the condonation of delay in filing the
Special Leave Petition, filed on 7.1.85, excepting the listing of dates on
which different departments took steps in passing on the file, the Supreme
Court cannot exercise its inherent powers under Rule 1 of Order XLVII of the
Supreme Court Rules read with section 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963 and condone
delay. Nor would it grant permission upon oral request to file a supplemental
affidavit after a lapse of nearly two years. [368C-D]
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Petition For
Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 2448 Of 1985 From the Judgment and Order
dated 10.7.84 of the High court of Karnataka at Bangalore in Writ Appeal No.
1267/84.
B. Datta, ASG. and Ms. S. Relan for the
Petitioner.
The following Order was delivered This
Special Leave Petition has been filed beyond the period prescribed by the Rules
for filing a special leave petition. The petitioner has flied an application
for condo- nation of delay in filing the special leave petition. There are no
grounds made out in the application for condonation of delay and the only
material set out in the application is the list of dates as starting from the
date of receipt of the certified copy of the judgment upto the dates of filing
of the Special Leave Petition. It appears from the list of dates that the
certified copy was received by the Collector of Central Excise on 22nd July,
1984 (wrongly 368 mentioned as 22nd July, 84) and it was after a period of two
months, on 29th September, 1984 that the certified copy was despatched by the
Collector of Central Excise to the Minis- try of Finance. The Ministry of
Finance referred the Case to the Central Agency Section on 15th October, 1984. But the Central Agency Section sent back the case to the Ministry of Finance with
the remark that the same should be sent to the Ministry of Law. This process of
realisation that the case should have been referred to the Ministry of Law and
not to the Ministry of Finance took about 24 days and thereafter, again, some
time was taken up at the subsequent stages. The learned Additional Solicitor
General gave his opinion on 18th December, 1984 that the special leave petition
should be filed. But even thereafter, there was a delay of more than a month
and a half and on 7th July, 1985, a special leave petition was filed without
offering any explanation for this delay at three stages. The Learned Additional
Solicitor General requested us to give him an opportunity to file a
supplemental affidavit explaining the delay at the three stages. But we do not
see why any further time should be granted to the petitioners to file a
supplemental affidavit. The application for condonation of delay was made on
7th January, 1985 and we are now in November 1986 and the petitioners thus had
a period of about one year and nine months to rectify the defect by filing a
supplemental affidavit but the petitioners have failed to do so. We do not
under the circumstances find any justification for condoning the delay and the
application is therefore rejected and so is the Special Leave Petition.
S.R. Petition dismissed.
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