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Ram Gopal v. The Joint Secretary, Development and Panchayat Department & Anr.

Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2021 INSC 893Decided 14 Dec 2021
Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 17673 of 2014
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Vineet Saran

Background

The petitioner's original special leave petition had already been dismissed by the Supreme Court years earlier. He then filed a review petition seeking to reopen that dismissal, but did so after an extraordinary delay of 2,323 days (more than six years) from when the review ought to have been filed.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined the petitioner's explanation for the massive delay in filing the review petition and found it "far from being satisfactory." Because the delay could not be condoned, the application for condonation of delay was rejected, and as a direct consequence, the review petition itself was dismissed on the ground of delay without the Court going into the merits of the underlying dispute.

Lesson Learnt

Even a potentially meritorious grievance can be lost permanently if a litigant does not act promptly: courts expect a credible, specific explanation for delay, and an excessive, poorly explained delay (here, over six years) can result in a case being thrown out on that technical ground alone, without ever being heard on its merits.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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