Times of India: Mumbai: Tuesday, August
08, 2017.
A delay of
452 days by the civic administration in appealing against an order, attracted
no rebuke or rejection, but was condoned by Bombay high court for the
"irresistible candour'' in its justification.
In 2009,
BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) filed an appeal, more than 15 months
after its 30-day deadline, against a stay of a notice it had issued in a case
of an alleged unauthorized construction. It attributed the delay to heavy work
load; thousands of litigation, an unrelenting typing burden, a unending queue
of queries under Right To Information (RTI) Act, reasons which the HC said were
"refreshing in their irresistible candour" and must be accepted. The
action that BMC had sought to take was in 1998. It was for removal of alleged
unauthorized construction in a room near a terrace of an old Colaba building.
The nearly two decade old action will now thus be heard again, nine years after
a stay by a lower court against a civic notice.
The civic
plea for condonation of delay was filed in 2009. It came up for a hearing on
August 1, 2017 when it was allowed. In his order, Justice Gautam Patel observed
that the delay was "explained by some exceptional justifications."
The BMC said it was challenging a decree of January 29, 2008 passed in a suit
filed in 1998 by Savitri D'Souza against a notice issued by the BMC. It said it
received the certified judgment copy in May 2008, "after making several
complaints to the city civil court registrar for its expeditious
issuance."
The law
provides 30 days to appeal, from date of receiving a certified copy. The BMC
had reasons for its delay. It said its officers were busy with attending to
part heard matters where instructions were sought from the ward and hence the
appeal papers could not be sent to the 'typing section' immediately. It then
also had to contend with translating documents relied on in the lower court,
"from Marathi or other languages" to English, for the appeal. The BMC
also blamed the "thousands of litigations" filed against it, due to
notices issued by the civic body and the fact that officers who may have issued
those notices are routinely transferred or promoted and also answerable to RTI
queries, or facing contempt for action taken or not. Civic officers being
occupied with public projects or busy attending to innumerable Public Interest
Litigation (PIL) in HC and also Supreme Court for the hoardings and hawkers'
matters, were also reasons for "administrative difficulty" in the
"unintentional delay."
The BMC has
been at the receiving end in several of these PILs. But on Tuesday, it
received, a benevolent smile as Justice Patel, observed, "these reasons
are, in my view, refreshing in their irresistible candour (to say nothing of
their anodyne guilelessness), and must be accepted."