Government departments must provide reasonable explanations for delays in legal proceedings; bureaucratic inefficiencies are insufficient for condonation of delay.

ORDER

1. This civil second appeal, which is reported to be time barred by 275 days, is accompanied with an application under Section 5 of Limitation Act.

2. In Para 2 of the application, which apparently is in the nature of a cyclostyle copy, it is stated as under:-

'2. That the Government Advocate on 1610-2017 gave his opinion on 8/11/2017.'

3. The aforesaid averment does not make any sense. It is further stated therein that thereafter, the file was sent by the District Superintendent of Police on 08.11.2017 to the Additional Director General of Police; but, the application is completely silent as to when and where the file travelled thereafter which resulted into inordinate delay of 275 days in preferring the appeal except rhetorically detailing the routine Government system in which the file travels. Therefore, the application does not contain reasons explaining the delay.

4. A Division Bench of this Court has, vide order dated 05.07.2022 in case of The State of Rajasthan & Ors. Vs. Rajasthan Board of Muslim Wakf passed in D.B. Special Appeal (Writ) No.798/2022, held as under:-

'We have gone through the application for condonation of delay. The averments made in the application under Section 5 of the Limitation Act do not travel beyond rhetoric of usual delay caused in movement of files from one table to the other. Lack of promptitude and lethargy in movement of files in filing of appeals/petitions by the State was deprecated by their Lordships in the Supreme Court in two recent judicial pronouncements.

In the case of State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors. V. Bherulal, 2020 SCC Online SC 849, it was found that the appeal filed by the State was with delay of 663 days. The cause shown for inordinate delay in that case was due to unavailability of documents and the process of arranging documents and also a reference to bureaucratic process works. In the aforesaid factual context, Their Lordships of the Supreme Court, referring to its earlier decision, observed as below-

'3. No doubt, some leeway is given for the Government inefficiencies but the sad part is that the authorities keep on relying on judicial pronouncements for a period of time when technology had not advanced and a greater leeway was given to the Government (Collector, Land Acquisition, Anantnag & Anr vs. Mst. Katiji & Ors. (1987) 2 SCC 107). This position is more than elucidated by the judgment of this Court in Office of the Chief Post Master General & Ors. v. Living Media India Ltd. & Anr. (2012) 3 SCC 563 where the Court observed as under:

'12) It is not in dispute that the person(s) concerned were well aware or conversant with the issues involved including the prescribed period of limitation for taking up the matter by way of filing a special leave petition in this Court. They cannot claim that they have a separate period of limitation when the Department was possessed with competent persons familiar with court proceedings. In the absence of plausible and acceptable explanation, we are posing a question why the delay is to be condoned mechanically merely because the Government or a wing of the Government is a party before us.

Though we are conscious of the fact that in a matter of condonation of delay when there was no gross negligence or deliberate inaction or lack of bonafide, a liberal concession has to be adopted to advance substantial justice, we are of the view that in the facts and circumstances, the Department cannot take advantage of various earlier decisions. The claim on account of impersonal machinery and inherited bureaucratic methodology of making several notes cannot be accepted in view of the modern technologies being used and available. The law of limitation undoubtedly binds everybody including the Government.

13) In our view, it is the right time to inform all the government bodies, their agencies and instrumentalities that unless they have reasonable and acceptable explanation for the delay and there was bonafide effort, there is no need to accept the usual