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SC bench found the High Court of Uttarakhand was not correct in holding that the application for restoration of the writ petition which was dismissed for non-prosecution was submitted with a delay of seven years
The Supreme Court has restored a 1987 writ petition, relating to land acquisition which was dismissed by the High Court for non-prosecution.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta has set aside the Uttarakhand High Court's order rejecting the plea for restoration of the petition.
High Court has been asked to decide the matter expeditiously after giving an opportunity of hearing to all the parties. Top Court has said the matter should have been heard and decided on merit as the petitioner still claimed to be in possession of the land under acquisition of the state government.
Appellant J N Puri had filed the writ petition before the High Court of Allahabad challenging the acquisition of his land by the respondent authorities way back in the year 1987 which was eventually dismissed for want of prosecution on February 26, 1992.
Puru later filed an application on March 23, 1992 for restoration of writ petition on the grounds that the name of his advocate G N Verma was not printed in the cause list and secondly one of the Judges(Justice A P Singh) before whom the matter was listed had himself as an advocate filed various applications etc. in the writ petition and thus, the appellant was carrying a bonafide belief that the matter would be deferred on account of recusal.
As the restoration application was not taken up for a significant period of time, he filed an application in 1999 to consider the plea.
"Be that as it may, the application preferred by the appellant in the year 1999 was treated to be an application for restoration of the writ petition and the Division Bench of the Uttrakhand High Court rejected the same vide order dated 20th November, 2001, for want of prosecution," the court noted.
The appellant then filed a recall application which was dismissed on March 8, 2019. Further a review application came to be dismissed on August 14, 2020.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave for the appellant contended the application for restoration of the writ petition was filed by the appellant on March 13, 1992, i.e., within a period of one month from the date of dismissal of writ petition for non-prosecution.
He said that the name of the appellant’s advocate was not reflected in the cause list and that one of the judges constituting the Division Bench before whom the matter was listed, had represented one of the parties in the writ Court and thus, the appellant was bonafide prevented from pursuing the Civil Miscellaneous Writ Petition.
Having considered the entirety of facts, the bench said, "We are of the view that the High Court of Uttarakhand was not correct in holding that the application for restoration of the writ petition which was dismissed for non-prosecution vide order dated 26th February, 1992 was submitted with a delay of seven years."
As a matter of fact, the application for restoration was filed within a period of one month which has been admitted in the counter affidavit filed by the State and the application was never considered on merits, the bench added.
Case Title: J N Puri vs. State of Uttar Pradesh (Now State of Uttarakhand) & Ors
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