STATE OF MEGHALAYA Vs. UMSAW KHWAN VILLAGE DURBAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appeal is directed against a judgment and order of February 17, 2014 passed on a writ petition instituted in the year 2012.

(2.) The appeal was filed after a colossal delay of 861 days and it appears that the application for condonation of delay was not pursued with due diligence despite such application being filed in 2016. The relevant application under Sec. 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963 came to be allowed by an order of November 24, 2021. It is necessary to notice the two material paragraphs of the relevant order:-

(3.) Courts are, by and large, reluctant to shut out a litigant on the ground of limitation. Even though the State is not a favoured litigant, when delay is cited on behalf of the Government, Courts frequently take a lenient view. In this case the Court was more than charitable in taking on board an appeal of the year 2016 against an order of the year 2014 that was sought to be effectively assailed only towards the end of the year 2021. As will be evident from the order of November 24, 2021, the respondents seriously objected to the condonation of delay, but primarily on the ground that the order had worked itself out and that the appellants had acted in terms of the order. Since such ground of opposition was, strictly speaking, not pertaining to the cause cited for the delay in preferring the appeal, but had more to do with the right of the appellants to question the propriety of an order that the appellants may have already accepted or acted upon, the issue was left open to be urged in the course of the appeal.