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PETITIONER: UNION OF INDIA & ORS.

       Vs.

RESPONDENT: VISVESWARAYA IRON & STEEL LTD.

DATE OF JUDGMENT24/11/1986

BENCH: BHAGWATI, P.N. (CJ) BENCH: BHAGWATI, P.N. (CJ) MISRA RANGNATH

CITATION:  1987 AIR  669            1987 SCR  (1) 367  1987 SCC  Supl.  192     1986 SCALE  (2)1253

ACT:     Practice  and  Procedure--Delay in  filing  the  Special Leave Petition not explained in the petition--Party desiring to  file  a supplemental affidavit to explain it,  when  the case  is  called  for, after a lapse of  nearly  two  years, hearing-Delay cannot be condoned--Supreme Court Rules, 1966, Order  XLVII  Rule 1 read with Section 5 of  the  Limitation Act.

HEADNOTE: Dismissing the SLP and CMP, the Court,     HELD: In the absence of any ground having been made  out in  the application for the condonation of delay  in  filing the  Special Leave Petition, filed on 7.1.85, excepting  the listing  of dates on which different departments took  steps in  passing on the file, the Supreme Court  cannot  exercise its  inherent  powers  under Rule 1 of Order  XLVII  of  the Supreme  Court Rules read with section 5 of  the  Limitation Act,  1963 and condone delay. Nor would it grant  permission upon  oral request to file a supplemental affidavit after  a lapse of nearly two years. [368C-D]

JUDGMENT:     CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Petition For Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No. 2448 Of 1985     From  the Judgment and Order dated 10.7.84 of  the  High court of Karnataka at Bangalore in Writ Appeal No. 1267/84. B. Datta, ASG. and Ms. S. Relan for the Petitioner. The following Order was delivered     This  Special Leave Petition has been filed  beyond  the period  prescribed by the Rules for filing a  special  leave petition. The petitioner has flied an application for condo- nation of delay in filing the special leave petition.  There are  no grounds made out in the application for  condonation of delay and the only material set out in the application is the  list of dates as starting from the date of  receipt  of the certified copy of the judgment upto the dates of  filing of  the Special Leave Petition. It appears from the list  of dates that the certified copy was received by the  Collector of Central Excise on 22nd July, 1984 (wrongly

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368 mentioned as 22nd July, 84) and it was after a period of two months, on 29th September, 1984 that the certified copy  was despatched by the Collector of Central Excise to the  Minis- try of Finance. The Ministry of Finance referred the Case to the  Central Agency Section on 15th October, 1984.  But  the Central Agency Section sent back the case to the Ministry of Finance with the remark that the same should be sent to  the Ministry  of Law. This process of realisation that the  case should have been referred to the Ministry of Law and not  to the  Ministry of Finance took about 24 days and  thereafter, again, some time was taken up at the subsequent stages.  The learned  Additional  Solicitor General gave his  opinion  on 18th  December, 1984 that the special leave petition  should be  filed.  But even thereafter, there was a delay  of  more than  a  month and a half and on 7th July, 1985,  a  special leave  petition was filed without offering  any  explanation for  this  delay  at three stages.  The  Learned  Additional Solicitor General requested us to give him an opportunity to file  a supplemental affidavit explaining the delay  at  the three stages. But we do not see why any further time  should be granted to the petitioners to file a supplemental affida- vit.  The application for condonation of delay was  made  on 7th  January, 1985 and we are now in November 1986  and  the petitioners  thus  had a period of about one year  and  nine months to rectify the defect by filing a supplemental  affi- davit  but the petitioners have failed to do so. We  do  not under the circumstances find any justification for condoning the  delay and the application is therefore rejected and  so is the Special Leave Petition. S.R.                                                Petition dismissed. 369