Recently, the Supreme Court held that a writ petition under Article 226 cannot be entertained when the petitioner has failed to pursue the statutory appellate remedy before the High Court provided under the Customs Act. The Court was dealing with a challenge arising from confiscation of seized silver and imposition of penalty, and observed that when the alternative remedy lies before the High Court itself, the writ jurisdiction should ordinarily not be invoked. The Court further noted that delayed invocation of writ jurisdiction cannot be justified by claiming pursuit of remedies elsewhere.
Brief Facts:
Silver alleged to be smuggled was seized by the authorities. An order was later passed confiscating the silver and imposing a monetary penalty. The petitioner challenged this before the appellate tribunal, which upheld the confiscation but reduced the penalty. Instead of filing a statutory appeal before the High Court within the prescribed limitation period, the petitioner approached the High Court much later by filing a writ petition challenging both the confiscation order and the tribunal’s order. The High Court declined to entertain the writ petition, holding that the petitioner had bypassed the statutory remedy and had also approached the court belatedly.
Contentions of the Petitioner:
Counsel for the petitioner argued that the tribunal had reduced the penalty but failed to consider the challenge to confiscation, and therefore the writ petition ought to have been entertained. It was contended that the confiscation was indeed questioned before the tribunal and that the High Court should have examined the matter on merits. The petitioner also attempted to explain the delay in invoking the writ jurisdiction, stating that the remedy under the Act could not be pursued earlier.
Observations of the Court:
The Court emphasised that the High Court was justified in refusing to exercise its writ jurisdiction when the petitioner had a fully efficacious statutory remedy before the High Court itself under the Customs Act. The Court reiterated the principle laid down in earlier Constitution Bench judgments, quoting the rule that where a litigant has an alternative remedy before the High Court in another jurisdiction, the writ court must ordinarily decline to exercise its jurisdiction. Referring to this principle, the Court observed, “Where it is open to the aggrieved petitioner to move another tribunal, or even itself in another jurisdiction for obtaining redress in the manner provided by a statute, the High Court normally will not permit, by entertaining a petition under Article 226, the machinery created under the statute to be by-passed.”
Further, the Court highlighted another foundational proposition: a petitioner who has failed to utilise the statutory remedy within limitation due to his own fault cannot later invoke writ jurisdiction to overcome that lapse. In this context, the Court echoed the earlier constitutional bench view, “If a petitioner has disabled himself from availing himself of the statutory remedy by his own fault in not doing so within the prescribed time, he cannot be permitted to urge that as a ground for the Court to exercise discretion under Article 226.”
The Court also held that although no strict period of limitation applies to writ petitions, the remedy must be invoked within a reasonable time. The statutory limitation period for the alternative remedy serves as an indicator of what constitutes reasonable time. The Court found the delay in approaching the High Court unjustifiable, noting that the petitioner could have sought condonation of delay before the High Court under the statutory appellate route.
On the merits, the Court noted that although the petitioner claimed that the confiscation issue was raised before the tribunal, there were no proper pleadings in the writ petition supporting this assertion. The Court held that a mere ground recorded in the petition without a verified pleading could not establish that the tribunal failed to consider an issue.
The decision of the Court:
Holding that the petitioner had an equally efficacious statutory remedy before the High Court and failed to pursue it within limitation, the Court affirmed that the High Court rightly declined to exercise writ jurisdiction. The Court also upheld the High Court’s view on merits, concluding that adequate pleadings were absent to show that the tribunal ignored any contention regarding confiscation. The appeal was accordingly dismissed.
Case Title: Rikhab Chand Jain vs. Union of India & Ors.
Case No.: Civil Appeal No. 6719 of 2012
Coram: Justice Dipankar Datta, Justice Aravind Kumar
Advocate for Petitioner: Adv. Chitrangda Rastravara (AOR) Anirudh Singh, Abhijeet Singh, Aishwary Mishra, Dhananjai Shekhwat, Sakshi Aggarwal, Yuvraj Singh, Pearl Pundir, Dashrath Singh
Advocate for Respondent: Adv. Raghavendra P.Shankar (A.S.G.), Amit Sharma-ii, Raman Yadav, Arvind Kumar Sharma (AOR)
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