State of Madhya Pradesh v Bherulal (2020)

Collector, Land Acquisition, Anantnag v Mst Katiji is the case every student cites for the liberal approach to sufficient cause. This short order is the necessary corrective, and an answer on s. 5 that stops at the liberal approach is incomplete without it.

The Court holds that the liberal approach is not a standing concession to the State, that reliance on bureaucratic procedure is not an explanation, and that merit in the case is no answer to a bar of limitation. It is also the case in which the Supreme Court imposed costs on a State for wasting judicial time, and directed that they be recovered from the officers responsible.

The special leave petition was filed with a delay of 663 days. The explanation offered in the application for condonation was that the delay was "due to unavailability of the documents and the process of arranging the documents", with a further reference to the way the "bureaucratic process works", such that "it is inadvertent that delay occurs".

The Court recorded that it was constrained to pen down a detailed order because its counselling to Government and Government authorities appeared to have fallen on deaf ears, the Supreme Court not being a place for "Governments to walk in when they choose ignoring the period of limitation prescribed."

Inefficiency is not a ground; if more time is needed, the remedy is legislative. The Court had earlier raised the possibility that if the Government machinery is so inefficient and incapable of filing appeals and petitions in time, the solution may lie in requesting the legislature to expand the limitation period for Government authorities — but that is not the position. So long as the statute subsists, appeals and petitions have to be filed within the periods it prescribes.

Reliance on older authority is misplaced. Some leeway is given for Government inefficiencies, but the authorities keep relying on judicial pronouncements from a period when technology had not advanced and a greater leeway was given to the Government, Katiji being the example the order names.

The modern position, adopted from earlier authority. The order sets out at length the passage from Office of the Chief Post Master General v Living Media India Ltd (2012) 3 SCC 563, whose propositions it adopts:

- a Department possessed of persons familiar with court proceedings cannot claim a separate period of limitation, and there is no reason to condone delay mechanically merely because the Government or a wing of the Government is a party; - a liberal concession is called for where there is no gross negligence, deliberate inaction or lack of bona fides, but in the absence of a plausible and acceptable explanation the Department cannot take advantage of 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 now available; - "The law of limitation undoubtedly binds everybody including the Government."; - government bodies must have a reasonable and acceptable explanation and must show bona fide effort, and the usual explanation that the file was kept pending for months or years due to procedural red tape need not be accepted; - "Condonation of delay is an exception and should not be used as an anticipated benefit for government departments. The law shelters everyone under the same light and should not be swirled for the benefit of a few."

Of that judgment the Court observes: "Eight years hence the judgment is still unheeded!"

Merit is no answer to limitation. The order rejects in terms the argument that delay should be overlooked where there is merit in the case. That the period of delay is to be given a go-by if there is some merit in the case is, in the Court's words, "A preposterous proposition". The answer given is short: "If a case is good on merits, it will succeed in any case. It is really a bar of limitation which can even shut out good cases. This does not, of course, take away the jurisdiction of the Court in an appropriate case to condone the delay."

Certificate cases. The Court identifies the practice it had earlier categorised as "certificate cases": hopeless petitions filed so as to obtain a certificate of dismissal from the Supreme Court, putting a quietus to the issue and allowing it to be said that nothing could be done because the highest Court dismissed the appeal — a formality that saves the skin of officers at default. The Court notes that counsel in this case addressed on the merits without even referring to limitation until the Bench required him to address the question of limitation first.

Condonation was refused. Looking to the period of delay and the casual manner in which the application had been worded, the Court imposed costs of Rs 25,000 on the petitioner-State, to be deposited with the Mediation and Conciliation Project Committee within four weeks, the amount to be recovered from the officers responsible for the delay and a certificate of recovery filed in the Court within that period. The special leave petition was dismissed as time barred.

The Court added that if the order was not complied with in time it would be constrained to initiate contempt proceedings against the Chief Secretary, and directed that a copy of the order be placed before the Chief Secretary, State of Madhya Pradesh.

The two positions are not in conflict, and an answer that presents them as a swing of judicial mood loses marks. The liberal approach is about how the elastic words sufficient cause are to be read once a cause is shown. It was always expressly conditioned on the absence of deliberate delay and culpable negligence. Where the application offers no cause at all but only a description of departmental process, the liberal approach has nothing to operate upon.