IN THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH AT JABALPUR BEFORE HON'BLE SHRI JUSTICE DEEPAK KHOT

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ON THE 24 OF FEBRUARY, 2026 MISC. CIVIL CASE No. 1471 of 2022 RAMADHAR PATEL Versus GANGA PATEL S/O NARAYAN PRASAD PATEL (DIED) THROUGH HIS LRS KEMLA AND OTHERS Appearance:

Shri Dileep Kumar Pandey - Advocate and Ms. Vaishnavi Nair -

Advocate for the applicant.

Shri Sukh Nandan Pandey Advocate for respondents No.4 and 5.

Ms. KCV Rao - Panel Lawyer for the respondent/State.

ORDER Heard on I.A.No.7154/2025 which is an application for condonation of delay of 855 days in filing the present application.

2. Present application has been filed for restoration of Miscellaneous Civil Case No.3028/2019, which was dismissed for non-compliance of common conditional order dated 31.01.2020.

3. It is submitted by counsel for the applicant that after passing of common conditional order dated 31.01.2020, due to onset of COVID 19 pandemic, the applicant could not contact his counsel. It is further submitted that thereafter, his wife died on 03.05.2020. It is submitted that when the counsel came to know about dismissal of the case, he informed the applicant that the case has been dismissed for non-compliance of the common conditional order dated 31.01.2020. It is submitted that the delay is based on bonafide and prayed for condonation of delay in filing the application. 4. Per contra, the application is opposed by counsel for the respondents. It is submitted that the common conditional order was passed on 31.01.2020, however, COVID 19 Pandemic commenced from the month of March, 2020, thus, applicant had sufficient time to cure the defaults. It is further submitted that present application has been filed for restoration of MCC No.3028/2019, which was filed for restoration of Second Appeal No.1214/2019. It is pointed out that there were various defaults in the Second Appeal for which applicant was granted six week's time to cure the defaults, however, since the applicant failed to remove the defaults, the Second Appeal was dismissed for non-compliance of the common conditional order dated 25.09.2019. An application MCC No.3028/2019 was filed for restoration of the Second Appeal, however, the same was also filed with a delay of 88 days. It is submitted that the applicant was not diligent to cure the defaults in Second Appeal as also in the MCC, which was filed for restoration of the Second Appeal. The present application as well as the previous application has been filed beyond the period of limitation. It is submitted that looking to the conduct of the applicant, present application deserves to be dismissed.

5. Heard learned counsel for the parties and perused the record.

6. The Hon'ble Apex Court in the case of State of Madhya Pradesh vs. Ramkumar Choudhary 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3612, has held as under :

"5.1. In Union of India v. Jahangir Byramji Jeejeebhoy (D) through his legal heir, wherein, one of us (J.B.Pardiwala, J) was a member, after referring to various decisions on the issue, it was in unequivocal terms observed by this Court that delay should not be excused as a matter of generosity and rendering substantial justice is not to cause prejudice to the opposite party. The relevant passage of the same is profitably extracted below:

“24. In the aforesaid circumstances, we made it very clear that we are not going to look into the merits of the matter as long as we are not convinced that sufficient cause has been made out for condonation of such a long and inordinate delay.

25. It hardly matters whether a litigant is a private party or a State or Union of India when it comes to condoning the gross delay of more than 12 years. If the litigant chooses to approach the court long after the lapse of the time prescribed under the relevant provisions of the law, then he cannot turn around and say that no prejudice would be caused to either side by the delay being condoned. This litigation between the parties started sometime in 1981. We are in 2024. Almost 43 years have elaps