Court allows condonation of significant delay in filing civil revision applications due to procedural reasons and lack of negligence.

ORDER

1. Present Civil Applications are filed by the State authorities seeking condonation of delay of 586 days which has occurred in preferring main Civil Revision Applications. When the matter is taken up for hearing explanation was given, which was found not much satisfactory to condone the delay of 586 days and, therefore, learned AGP was called upon to explain some more details. As a result of which, the applicants have submitted an additional affidavit affirmed on 14.03.2019 in support of their original request. Upon perusal of the same, the Court issued notice originally vide order dated 19.03.2019 and pursuant to such notice, learned advocate Mr.Tejas Satta has instructions to appear for contesting respondents.

2. Considering the averments in the application and submissions made by the learned advocates. With broad consensus, delay of 586 days deserves to be condoned. However, from the explanation given by the State authorities in their application as well as an additional affidavit, some portion deserves to be quoted herein after;

3.1 In application it is stated that;

“3.

It is most respectfully submitted that Ld. Principal Sr. Civil Judge, Gondal at Rajkot vide Judgment and award dated 30.06.2016 had pleased to partly allowed the reference preferred by the Claimants, and being aggrieved by the same, the applicants State Government have preferred First Appeal No. 399 of 2017 and allied matters alongwith respective Civil Applications for delay and stay whereby vide order dated 10.02.2017 the Hon’ble Division Bench of this Court had pleased to admit the appeals preferred by the applicants by granting Stay of the Judgment and award passed by the Ld. Reference Court.

4. It is most humbly and respectfully submitted that thought the Judgment and award was carried before this Hon’ble Court and pending for final adjudication the Ld. Court below had allowed the application preferred u/s. 152 of CPC vide order dated 02.03.2017 whereby after receiving the opinion from the concerned Government Pleader, on 04.04.2017 the communication was forwarded to the office of the Government Pleader, High Court of Gujarat, whereby it was conveyed to initiate appropriate proceedings for getting stay of the order dated 02.03.2017 by bringing notice to the Hon’ble Court in the pending First Appeals.

Thereafter the papers were given to the concerned Assistant Government Pleader for drafting of appropriate application, and by perusing the same, the concerned Government Pleader was of the opinion to prefer Civil Revision Application against the order dated 02.03.2017 passed u/s. 152 of the CPC and thereafter in the month of June, 2017 the draft of Civil Revision Application was send to the concerned officer, and also instructions were given to provide details of each and claimants as the Civil Revision Application is require to be file in the case of all claimants.

5. It is most respectfully submitted that in the concerned officer who was handling the matter got retired, and therefore the further follow up for providing the necessary details was not taken up, and only in the month of December, 2018, when the concerned Dy.

Executive Engineer had came to attend some other matter in the High Court of Gujarat, it was brought to his notice that the Civil Revision Applications is yet to be file before this Hon’ble Court thought the draft qua main matter was already sent but because of non availability of the details in other cases, the draft of Civil Revision Applications were not be prepared and thereafter the details of all the claimants were provided in the office of the Government Pleader, High Court of Gujarat and after receipt of the same, the Draft of Civil Revision Applications