JUDGMENT

Mr. Pankaj Jain, J. (Oral)

The afore-captioned 11 writ petitions involve common question of law based upon common set of facts. For convenience, facts are being taken from CWP- 1187-2017.

2. Petitioner is a co-operative society. Respondent No.4 was working as Field Officer with the petitioner and was custodian of Wheat stocks for the year 1998-99, 2000-01. Petitioner-Department claims that due to negligence of respondent No.4, the petitioner suffered a loss of Rs.69,83,741/- owing to shortage and rate difference in the wheat crop for the crop years, he was custodian of the crop. Arbitration proceedings under Section 55 -56 of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961 (in short 1961 Act') were initiated against respondent No.4 for recovery of 50% of total loss (50% of 6983741 = 3491870.50) alongwith interest @ 18%. Arbitrator- respondent No.3 dismissed the claim petition and answered the arbitral dispute in favour of respondent No.4. Aggrieved by the award, petitioner preferred appeal before Registrar Cooperative Societies against Award (P-1). Section 68 of the 1961 Act provides for appeal. Registrar Cooperative Societies vide order dated 04.12.2013 (P-2) has dismissed the appeal preferred by the petitioner being barred by delay holding as under:-

"xx xx xx

After hearing the arguments of the counsels for both the parties, keeping in view the record available in the file and judgments passed by the Hon'ble Punjab and Haryana High Court/Financial Commissioner Cooperation, I have come to this conclusion that the appellant were liable to file the appeal within 60 days under section 68 (2) of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961 and this appeal has been filed after 321 days of the limitation period. Therefore, being time-barred, this appeal is hereby rejected. Decision is pronounced in the open court."

3. In all these writ petitions, the disputes relate to recovery proceedings initiated by the petitioner against the employees for having caused loss. In all these matters, the appeals preferred by the petitioner have been filed beyond prescribed period. The same are accompanied by applications seeking condonation of delay. The appeals have been dismissed holding that there is no provision contained in the 1961 Act to condone the delay. It has been held that in the absence of any enabling provision, the authority has no power to condone the delay and thus sufficient cause as pleaded cannot be looked into.

4. Counsel for the petitioner has pressed into service provision contained in Section 29(2) of the LIMITATION ACT to claim that since 1961 Act being Special/Local law provides for appeal, a period of limitation is different from the period prescribed by the schedule appended to the LIMITATION ACT , 1963, the provision contained in Section 4 to 24 (inclusive) shall apply as there is no express exclusion thereof by 1961 Act.

5. Reliance is being placed upon three bench judgment rendered by Apex Court in Civil Appeal No.8276/8277 of 2019, titled as ' Superintending Engineer/Dehar Power House Circle BBMB v. Excise and Taxation Officer, Sunder Nagar ' decided on 25.10.2019.

6. Per contra, counsels representing the respondents have very eloquently submitted that as per settled law, there is no provision enabling the Appellate Authority to condone delay in filing the appeal. The matter is fully covered by decision rendered by Division Bench of this Court in LPA-755-2013 decided on 13.07.2015 titled as ' Balbir Singh Jammu v. Financial Commissioner, Cooperation, Punjab and others', wherein it was held that Sec