Oriental Insurance Co vs BAHADUR RAM

THIS is an application for condonation of sizeable delay in preferring the appeal. The order of the District Forum under challenge was recorded way back on the 18th of September, 1991. The appeal was however, preferred as date as 29th of November, 1991 plainly far beyond the prescribed period of 30 days under Section 15 of the Consumer Protection Act.

LEARNED Counsel for the applicant had first attempted to contend that the period of limitation should be computed from the 30th of September, 1991 when a copy of the order under appeal was allegedly received in the office of the appellant company. This submission has only to be noticed and rejected. It is well settled in this jurisdiction since a considerable time by the exhaustive order of the State Commission in First Appeal No. 16 of 1990 ''Haryana State Electricity Board v. Dinesh Kumar'' decided on 4th February, 1991 that the terminus for computing the period of limitation runs from the date of the order and not from any supposedly slippery date of the alleged receipt of a copy thereof. In view of this authoritative pronouncement the delay in filing the appeal has to be viewed from the recording of the order and thus works out to 42 days beyond the prescribed period. What next deserve highlighting is the fact that even placing the case of the applicant on the highest and computing the period from the 30th of September, 1991 the present appeal is still being filed far beyond the limitation period of 30 days. The only extenuation suggested for this gross laches on behalf of the applicant is that 10 days after the receipt of the copy of the order an application was sought to be moved before the District Forum on the 10th of October, 1991 seeking a review of the judgment and rehearing of the whole case. When pointedly asked the learned Counsel for the appellant-applicant could point out no provision, nor cite any chapter or verse which warranted the making of such an application. Obviously once the order has been pronounced the same could be impugned only by way of an appeal under Section 15. The misguided filing of an application not warranted by any provision of law and principle can thus hardly be any legal ground or sufficient cause for not preferring the appeal against the order within limitation.

Yet again it is not the applicant''s case that the District Forum in any way entertained the said application or initiated any proceedings thereon or issued notice to the Opposite Party. Had it been so there might have been some tenous foot-hold for the appellant to suggest that they were misled by any such action. It is the applicant''s own case that the District Forum rightly ignored the application and declined to go into the same, after they had become functous officio by pronouncing judgment in the case. There is no explanation as to why after preferring the application the appellant then later chose to prefer the appeal as they did on the 29lh of November, 1991.

FOR the aforesaid reasons, we find not the least adequate or sufficient cause for condoning the delay in the present case. The respondent consumer has by now a vested right in his favour and it would be obviously unfair to over-ride the same by reopening a matter when the delay in the appeal appears to have been occasioned by patent legal negligence. This application is, therefore, to be consequently rejected and inevitably the appeal also fails on the preliminary bar of limitation. Appeal failed.