"No Change In Haryana Govt's Attitude": High Court Sets Aside Order Condoning 3 Yrs Delay In Filing Appeal On Ground That Case Files Were Lost

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday slammed the Haryana government for paying no heed to the Limitation Act and causing inordinate delays in preferring appeals.

A single bench of Justice Deepak Gupta, while refusing to excuse the government on the ground that the case file was lost during interdepartmental consultation, remarked,

"In large number of cases, the Government seeks to condone the delay on the similar grounds. Despite repeated directions given by this Court as well as by the Hon'ble Apex Court in plethora of authorities, there appears to be no change in the attitude of the State Government. The appeals are filed with impunity by the Government with huge delays and delay is sought to be condoned by assuming as if there is no statute like Limitation Act or under the assumption that application for whatever delay, will be condoned by the Court."

The bench continued that even when the case file was said to have been lost by a particular official, no action was taken against him. Therefore it said that simply by stating that file moved from one office to another for seeking opinion and then was lost by one of the official, the State cannot be allowed to file an appeal with delay of more than 3 years, without bringing on record any fact as to the action taken against the erring officers/officials.

"Rarely any action is taken against erring officials/public servants for their inaction of not taking the decision well within time resulting in huge delays. This practice must be put to stop."

The Court was hearing a revision petition against the order of Additional District Judge who had condoned a delay of 1066 days at the behest of the State in preferring appeal against grant of decree of mandatory and perpetual injunction in favour of the petitioner herein.

The suit was decreed by the Trial Court in 2014. The State of Haryana filed an appeal in December 2017. The petitioner contended that this was nothing but a measure to harass him.