Order no. 7 Date: 21-09-2017

Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

Today is fixed for passing order in respect of the delay condonation petition of the Appellant.

By such petition, it is stated by the Appellant that he came to know about the outcome of the instant complaint case on 28-07-2016 and accordingly, on 29-07-2016, he obtained certified copy of the impugned order.  Thereafter, he handed over the certified copy of final order and other relevant documents to his Ld. Advocate.  It is the further case of the Appellant that as per the advice of his Ld. Advocate, he visited the office of the Respondent No. 3 and requested them to return all the original documents, who asked him to visit again in the last week of September, 2016.  Accordingly, the Appellant again visited the  said office in the last week of September, 2016 and at that time, the concerned officials of the Respondent No. 3 reportedly asked him to revisit the bank after Diwali festival. However, when the Appellant went to the office of the Respondent No. 3 in the first week of November, 2016, they refused to handover the original documents to him.  At that time, as his Ld. Advocate was extremely busy to attend to his ailing relative, the matter of filing the present Appeal got further delayed.  Ultimately, the Appeal was filed on 08-12-2016.

Heard the Ld. Advocate of the Appellant on the issue, perused the material on record.

It is stated in the petition that after going through the relevant papers, he was asked by his Ld. Advocate to prefer an Appeal against the impugned order.  Again, it is stated that as per the advice of his Ld. Advocate, he visited the office of the Respondent No. 3 to take back original documents. However, there is no explanation what specific documents he intended to obtain from the Respondent No. 3 and above all, why those documents were so important to him that for want of said documents, he could not move the Appeal in time.  It is to be kept in mind that for the purpose of filing an Appeal before the Appellate forum, the original copy of impugned order is suffice at the initial stage; there is no necessity of filing any other original document at that stage and admittedly, he collected the requisite document, viz., certified copy of impugned order within 10 days of passing of the order. 

Further, the Appellant attributed the delayed filing of his Appeal to the alleged illness of a close relative of his Ld. Advocate and to buttress such claim, two prescriptions are filed from his side.  On a cursory eye view of the said prescriptions we find that one Sri Sankar Jana visited the chamber of a local physician only once in between the period November., 2016 and December, 2016, when the patient was advised to continue same medicines as before and also advised blood-sugar test.  Seemingly, the state of health of the patient was not so serious at that juncture.  Therefore, it is unbelievable that because of such routine check-up, that too only once in two months, Appellant’s Ld. Advocate was so busy that he could not discharge his professional duties properly.

Accordingly, none of the pleas taken by the Appellant sounds convincing to us.  We, therefore, see no cogent ground to condone such huge delay of 110 days, excluding the statutory period of limitation in filing this Appeal.  The petition, accordingly, stands rejected.

Consequently, the Appeal stands dismissed being barred by limitation.