Read Time: 09 minutes

Synopsis

The Allahabad High Court recently declined to quash an 11-year-old judgment, emphasizing the finality attached to the judgments and orders passed by a court.

The bench of Justice Saumitra Dayal Singh and Justice Shiv Shanker Prasad said, "Almost eleven years have passed since the impugned order came to be pronounced more than a decade ago. Finality attached to the judgements and orders passed by a Court is not a matter to be triffled with".

The bench said that though the Constitution does not allow one to assume that all judgments of the courts would be correct on all counts, yet for functionality to exist and order to prevail, the doctrine of finality of adjudication often eclipses or over powers concerns or considerations that otherwise exist in favour of accuracy or correctness of judgments.

"Archival judgments are not to be dug out to test their correctness or to correct any error of law that may be claimed to exist in them," said the bench. 

Court further clarified that once a proceeding is shown to have been contested fairly and squarely by the necessary parties, the finality of such adjudication must be maintained without excessive concern for the inconvenience that may be suffered by one or other party.

"More than that, in the case of the contesting State, we cannot make any exception to that Rule. State is a mammoth being of which citizen is a constituent cell," the court said. 

The observations were made in a civil miscellaneous review application directed against the order of a coordinate bench of the high court dated February 12, 2013, by which the state government had been ordered ensure the payment of non-practising allowances to all the Medical Officers including the petitioners whose services were governed by 1953 Rules, including Ayurvedic, Allopathic and Homeopathic Medical Officers.

The order of the high court was challenged before the top court which had dismissed the appeal. 

Thereafter, the State had implemented the high court's order on May 23, 2014. However, subsequently, another round of litigation started pertaining to the same order, and concluded in 2021 with Supreme Court upholding the order of the high court in favour of the private respondents in the matter.

Two more writ petitions are pending over the same issue. Court noted that only after the subsequent writ petitions filed by private doctors as well as practitioners of Homeopathic medicine, the review applicants woke up from deep slumber to realise that in absence of compliance of Rule 4 of the U.P. Government Doctors (Allopathic) Restriction on Private Practice Rules, 1983, neither the private respondents nor other doctors who did not hold MBBS degree or BDS or LSMF (LMP) diploma or who were not registered with Indian Medical Council/Indian Dental Council or who were not holding a post for which MBBS degree or BDS or LSMF (LMP) diploma was an essential qualification, were not eligible to claim benefit of the Rules and thus non-practising allowance.

Court stressed that it was the argument of the Additional Advocate General that the obvious ground of challenge, somehow escaped the entire establishment of the State. To this, the bench said,

"Though equipped with best resources that our society can afford, not only the State lost before the Supreme Court not once but twice but that even if the ground of review survived to it despite such reversal faced, it somehow did not raise enough noise to disturb the deep sleep of the State functionaries."

Court held that what had caused the State to now act was not a new fact or ground becoming available but recurrence of a litigation.

Court opined that while such grounds might have been open to be raised at the appropriate time, at present, the same was not more than academic, in the context of the finality of adjudication in favour of the private respondents.

"In the context of the fact situation obtaining in the present case, we do not see what grave prejudice may be caused to the State in continuing to implement the impugned order, as it has been doing for almost eleven years," said the division bench. 

Therefore, court declined to to condone "the extraordinary and inordinate, unexplained delay".

"Even on merits, the matter is seen to have attained finality. Delay if condoned and review entertained would only bring uncertainty where finality otherwise prevails," it said while dismissing the review application. 

Case Title: Dr. Arvind Kumar And 3 Others v. State Of U.P. And 4 Others