Allahabad High Court
State Of U.P. Thru The Secy.Small ... vs Sri Chhedi Lal Kuril And Another on 9 May, 2017
Bench: Sudhir Agarwal, Virendra Kumar-Ii
HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT ALLAHABAD, LUCKNOW BENCH
Court No. - 3
Case :- SERVICE BENCH No. - 308 of 2013
Petitioner :- State Of U.P. through The Secretary, Small Scale Industries and others
Respondent :- Sri Chhedi Lal Kuril and Another
Counsel for Petitioner :- C.S.C.
Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Anil Kumar Rajvanshi,Sanjai Saxena
Hon'ble Sudhir Agarwal,J.
Hon'ble Virendra Kumar-II,J.
1. Heard learned Standing Counsel for petitioner and Shri Sanjay Saxena, learned counsel for respondents.
2. Admittedly, claimant-respondent retired on 30.06.1995 and his pension was fixed. Some other persons disputing fixation of their pension raised a dispute before this Court in Writ Petition No. 7313 (S/S) of 1996 wherein order was passed on 15.3.1999. A review filed by petitioners was rejected on 30.6.2008. Thereafter their pension was re-fixed. For taking advantage of the judgment dated 15.03.1999 passed in the aforesaid writ petition, claimant-respondent filed Claim Petition No. 208 of 2012 seeking refixation of his pay and same benefit as granted to others in the light of judgment in Writ Petition No. 7313 (S/S) of 1996, decided on 15.03.1999. Tribunal has observed that since applicant-respondent is claiming benefit of a judgment, therefore, limitation would not come in his way and has allowed claim petition. This view of Tribunal, in our view, is clearly erroneous.
3. In Rup Diamonds, M/s. Vs. Union of India AIR 1989 SC 674, Court considered a case where petitioner wanted to get the relief on the basis of the judgment of Supreme Court wherein a particular law had been declared ultra vires. Court rejected the petition on the ground of delay and latches observing as under:
"There is one more ground which basically sets the present case apart. Petitioners are re-agitating claims which they had not pursued for several years. Petitioners were not vigilant but were content to be dormant and chose to sit on the fence till somebody else's case came to be decided."
(Emphasis added)
4. In State of Karnataka and others Vs. S.M. Kotrayaya and others 1996 (6) SCC 267, Court rejected contention that a petition should be considered ignoring delay and laches on the ground that it has been filed just after coming to know about relief granted by Court in a similar case. Court held that same cannot furnish a proper explanation for delay and laches. Court observed that such a plea is wholly unjustified and cannot furnish any ground for ignoring delay and laches.
5. Same view has been reiterated in Jagdish Lal and others Vs. State of Haryana and others AIR 1997 SC 2366, wherein it has observed as under:
"Suffice it to state that appellants kept sleeping over their rights for long and elected to wake-up when they had impetus from Veer Pal Chauhan and Ajit Singh's ratio... desperate attempts of the appellants to re-do the seniority, had by them in various cadre... are not amenable to the judicial review at this belated stage. The High Court, therefore, has rightly dismissed the writ petition on the ground of delay as well."
6. In State of U.P. and others Vs. Arvind Kumar Srivastava and others 2015 (1) SCC 347, Court considered in detail the question, "whether in the given case, approach of the Tribunal and the High Court was correct in extending the benefit of earlier judgment of Tribunal, which had attained finality as it was affirmed till the Supreme Court, whereas appellants in that case contend that respondents therein did not approach Court in time and were fence-sitters and, therefore, not entitled to get benefit of said judgment by approaching judicial forum belatedly", and finally drew the conclusion observing:
"Those persons who did not challenge the wrongful action in their cases and acquiesced into the same and woke up after long delay only because of the reason that their counterparts who had approached the Court earlier in time succeeded in their efforts, then such employees cannot claim that the benefiturdi word. "Udu" meaning in hindi of the judgment rendered in the case of similarly situated persons be extended to them. They would be treated as fence-sitters and laches and delays, and/or the acquiescence, would be a valid ground to dismiss their claim."
7. Thus, it is evident that a person cannot take benefit of judgment procured by a diligent person approaching the Court within time after the cause of action had arisen long back.
8. In view of above discussion, we are of the view that Original Application was not maintainable before Tribunal being barred by limitation. Tribunal, therefore, has committed manifest error in allowing the same by means of impugned judgment.
9. In the result, the writ petition is allowed. Impugned judgment dated 25.01.2012 passed by Tribunal in Claim Petition No. 208 of 2011 is hereby set aside and claim petition is hereby dismissed.
Order Date :- 09.5.2017
Mustaqeem/Virendra
