NEW DELHI: The rate at which the Supreme Court is imposing costs on the government for huge delays in filing appeals and directing recovery from officials responsible for the delay, soon many officers would be left with a slimmer paycheck at the end of the month.
Days after imposing a cost of Rs 25,000 on the railways and asking it to recover it from officers responsible for the delay of 385 days in filing an appeal in the SC, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy on Thursday saddled the HRD ministry with Rs 1 lakh cost for filing an appeal in the high court after a delay of 2,509 days and carrying it to the SC after a delay of 532 days. It ordered the law secretary and the HRD secretary to ensure that the cost of Rs 1 lakh was recovered from officials responsible for the delay.
“The approach of the Union of India in the manner it has filed the present special leave petition exasperates us as all earlier counsel appears to have been thrown in the dustbin,” the bench said.
A writ petition was filed in 2000, raising a question of parity in the pay scale of employees of the Central Tibetan School Administration. A single judge bench of the HC allowed it in May 2002. The Centre filed an appeal but no one appeared when it was called for hearing before a division bench, which dismissed it. After eight years, the Centre sought restoration of the appeal saying the counsel had become a judge and it wasn’t aware of the “peculiar circumstances”. The HC had dismissed the plea and said the Centre was not an illiterate litigant.
The bench headed by Justice Kaul agreed with the HC and said, “The mighty government of India is manned by a large legal department having numerous officers and advocates. The excuse given for the delay is, to say the least, preposterous”.
On the case in hand, the bench dismissed the appeal and ordered, “Looking to the gross negligence and the impunity with which the Union of India has approached this court in a matter like this, we consider it appropriate to impose special cost of Rs 1 lakh in this case to be recovered from the concerned officer(s), to be deposited with the Supreme Court Advocates on Record Welfare Fund within four weeks.