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Judgment
Sunil Kumar Sinha, Actg. C.J.—Heard.
This is an Application, filed by the Appellant/Insurance Company, for condonation of delay in filing the Appeal.
The Appeal is barred by 141 days of limitation.
Mr. Manish Kr. Jain, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the Appellant, submitted that on account of completion of various formalities for taking permission to file this Appeal, the Appeal could not be filed in time and the delay deserves to be condoned.
On the other hand, Mr. N. Rai, Sr. Advocate and Mr. Ajay Rathi, learned counsel appearing on behalf of the Respondents, have opposed these arguments and submitted that the delay in filing the Appeal has not been properly explained. Their submission is that even the delay caused in movement of the file in the Insurance Department is held explained and condoned, yet the delay of 84 days in filing the application for obtaining certified copy of the Award stands totally unexplained.
In N. Balakrishnan Vs. M. Krishnamurthy, , it was held that the condonation of delay is a matter of discretion of the Court. Section 5 of the Limitation Act does not say that such discretion can be exercised only if the delay is within a certain limit. Length of delay is no matter, acceptability of the explanation is the only criterion. Sometimes delay of the shortest range may be uncondonable due to a want of acceptable explanation whereas in certain other cases, delay of a very longer period can be condoned as the explanation thereof is satisfactory.
The Award in the instant case was passed by the Claims Tribunal on 27.12.2013 in presence of counsel for all the parties, and the Application for obtaining the certified copy of the Award was filed on 22.03.2014. This is clear from the certified copy of the Award on which there is endorsement to this effect of the Copying Section of District and Sessions Court (E/N) at Gangtok. Thus, the Application for obtaining the certified copy itself was filed after a period of 84 days. I have perused the Application filed by the Appellant for condonation of delay. In this Application proper averments have not been made regarding these 84 days. The Appellant has simply said in paragraph No. 2 that after the decision of the Claims Tribunal on 27.12.2013, the Application for obtaining the certified copy of the Award was filed on 22.03.2014 (wrongly written as 22.03.2013 in the Application) when the Appellant was informed about the said Award by their investigator. When the Award was passed in presence of counsel for all the parties including the Appellant, the above plea does not appear to be bona fide, particularly, in absence of any averment to the effect that the counsel for the Appellant never informed them about passing of the said award by the Tribunal. Had it been a case in which the impugned Award would have been passed in absence of the counsel for the Appellant, then the situation would have been different.
In an Application filed for condonation of delay, each day of delay has to be explained by the party concerned. In the instant case, on perusal of the Application for condonation of delay (C.M.A. No. 256/2014) and the affidavit filed in support of the said Application, it would be clear that the Appellant has failed to explain the delay of 84 days which was consumed for filing of the Application for obtaining certified copy of the Award. No cause, much less a sufficient cause, at all has been shown for such an inordinate delay in filing the Application.
I am of the view that the delay has not been properly explained in this matter and the Application filed for condonation of delay deserves to be dismissed.
C.M.A. No. 256/2014, therefore, fails and is accordingly dismissed.