'Cannot Be Taken Lightly': Rajasthan HC Takes Exception To Party's Concealment Of Coordinate Bench Order, Imposes ₹5 Lakh Cost
The Rajasthan High Court imposed a cost of Rs. 5 lakhs on a petitioner for concealing an order passed by a coordinate bench of the Court in the petitioner's other writ petition with similar prayers and filing the current petition in violation of the earlier order.
The bench of Justice Dinesh Mehta was hearing a petition filed by the Indira Education Institute of Nursing seeking directions to the State Government to include its name in the list of eligible institutions for conducting counselling for the academic session 2024-25 onwards in the GNM course with an intake capacity of 100 students.
In this case, before arguing on the merits, the Additional Advocate General (AAG), appearing for the State, put forth an order passed in 2023 (“the Order”) by the coordinate bench of the Court in the petitioner's other writ petition filed for the previous academic year i.e. 2022-23.
In that order, the Court had expressed concerns about the petitioner approaching the Court repeatedly and had ruled that if the petitioner filed a subsequent writ petition without applying for an NOC, that shall be deemed to be in violation of the direction of the Court in that writ.
In light of this order, the AAG highlighted that the petitioner had neither applied for an NOC before filing the present petitioner nor did it place a copy of the Order on record.
Opposing these arguments, the counsel for the petitioner submitted that the Order was challenged by way of filing a review petition which was under consideration. Since the review petition was pending, the petitioner bonafidely believed that it did not require applying for a fresh NOC. Furthermore, it was argued that failure to place a copy of the Order on record for the present petition was an inadvertent mistake on part of the petitioner.
After hearing both sides, the Court observed that considering the fact that the counsel appearing in the present petition was the same as the one that appeared in the last petition in which the Order was given, it was startling that the petitioner omitted to produce the Order.
Furthermore, the Court also opined that the Order was very clear about the fact that the Order would be confined to the year 2022-2023 and that the Petitioner would be required to apply for NOC for any subsequent petition. Hence, the petitioner's actions of not applying for NOC and failing to make a reference to the Order was nothing short of misleading.
“Filing of the present writ petition is therefore, clearly in defiance of the earlier order passed by Co-ordinate Bench of this Court. And then, non-disclosure of earlier writ petition and not bringing the said order to the notice of the Court is like adding fuel to fire - it cannot be taken lightly.”
In this light, the Court dismissed the petition filed and imposed a cost of Rs. 5 lakhs on the petitioner to be paid to the State Government and ordered the utilization of such amount for the welfare of nurses.
Title: Indira Education Institute of Nursing v State of Rajasthan & Ors.
Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Raj) 279