Order No. 5 Date: 22-03-2017

Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

This day is fixed for passing order in respect of the application filed u/s 5 of the Limitation Act, read with Sec. 13 and 15 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

By such petition, it is stated by the Appellant that it was totally in the dark about the ongoing proceedings before the Ld. District Forum.  As such, the case was heard ex parte against it.  It is claimed that the Appellant came to know about the impugned Order after receiving the same from the Ld. Advocate of the Respondent vide his letter dated 11-01-2016.  After going through the impugned Order, it decided to prefer an Appeal and accordingly the concerned Ld. Advocate in New Delhi was instructed to prepare the draft.  Thereafter, it took some time to complete due official procedure for the purpose of preparation of Memo of Appeal and finally the Appeal was filed.  It is stated that the Appeal has a fair chance of success and therefore, it prayed for allowing its petition for condonation of delay.

Filing a W.O., it is stated by the Respondent that the Appellant made a fake and fabricated story to wriggle out of the situation.  It is further stated that the Appellant chose not to appear and contest the complaint case on its own accord and therefore, it cannot cry foul at this stage.  Finally, the Respondent prayed for dismissal of the petition.

We have heard the submission made by the Ld. Advocates of both sides and perused the documents on record.

It appears from the impugned Order that due service was effected upon the Appellant.  Despite this, it preferred to skip the proceedings before the Ld. District Forum.  Significantly, the Appellant has not placed on record any documentary proof, such as, daily order sheets of the Ld. District Forum to show that without serving any notice upon it, the Ld. District Forum went ahead with the complaint proceedings.  It goes to show that the Appellant has not approached this Commission with clean hands.

Be that as it may, admittedly the Appellant came to know about passing of impugned order on receipt of a letter dated 11-01-2016 from the Ld. Advocate of the Respondent.  As against this, it appears that the Respondent applied for certified copy of impugned Order before the Ld. District Forum on 03-10-2016, i.e., approx. 9 months from the date of its knowledge according to Appellant’s own admission.  There is no clarity why did it take so much time to make up its mind to move an Appeal against the impugned Order. 

We also notice that it is stated in the petition under consideration that after obtaining certified copy of the impugned Order, it was required to be sent to its Ld. Advocate stationed in New Delhi which took around a week.  Thereafter, necessary documents/inputs, those were required for the purpose of preparation of the Appeal, was collected from the Bangalore Office of the Appellant. Thereafter, the same was compiled and sent to the Legal department which subsequently forwarded the same to the Ld. Advocate handling the particular matter for preparing Appeal. Ultimately, the Appeal was filed on 18-10-2016. 

If one is to believe the sequence of events as narrated above by the Appellant in its petition for condonation of delay at its face value, then it would appear that the entire preparatory work for filing this Appeal was done within a span of fortnight of receipt of the certified copy of the impugned Order.  In this regard it is noteworthy that the Appellant has stated that it took around a week time to send the certified copy of impugned order to New Delhi.  Going by this, it was only natural, although not stated in specific terms, that similar time was taken for the final copy of Memo of Appeal to reach Kolkata from New Delhi.  Then question would naturally be asked, when so-called legal inputs were collected from the Bangalore Office and when it was compiled, also when such compiled documents were forwarded to the Ld. Advocate in New Delhi and finally, when the Memo of Appeal was finally prepared and due signature of the authorized signatory was obtained. 

We afraid, in view of the absurdity of such proposition; more so, in absence of corroborative documentary proof in this regard, we cannot accept the contention of the Appellant as a gospel truth.

In this regard, reference may be drawn to the decision of the Hon’ble Court in the matter of Anshul Agarwal vs. New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, reported in (2011) 14 SCC 678 and R.B. Ramlingam Vs. R.B. Bhavaneshwari, reported in I (2009) CLT 188 (SC). 

It is the settled position of law that “sufficient cause” cannot be condoned liberally, if negligence in action or lack of bonafides are attributable to the party, praying for exercise of such discretion in its favour, and that when statute provides for a particular period of limitation, it has to be applied with all its rigors, as an unlimited limitation leads to a sense of uncertainty.

Truth to tell, on going through the petition under consideration, we do not come across any viable reasoning to justify filing of this Appeal beyond 261 days from the statutory period of limitation.  As such, we are constrained to reject the petition seeking condonation of delay.  Consequently, the Appeal stands dismissed being barred by limitation.