Court No. - 19
Case :- WRIT - A No. - 57481 of 2017
Petitioner :- Shiva Kant Yadav And 18 Others Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 4 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Rajesh Kumar Singh
Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Syed Nadeem Ahmad
Hon'ble Suneet Kumar,J.
Heard learned counsel for parties and perused the record.
Petitioner is confining relief only from the date of application submitted by it seeking application of judgment of Apex Court in State of Uttar Pradesh and others Vs Pawan Kumar Dwivedi and others, (2014) 9 SCC 692, to the case of it has approached respondents by making an application dated 11.11.2017 and could not dispute that aforesaid judgment of Supreme Court deciding the controversy vide judgment dated 02.09.2014 would not confer right upon petitioner to agitate the issue of claiming advantage of the said judgment from 2006. The benefit of a judgment is not be an explanation to cover up huge delay and laches which are unexplained otherwise.
In Rup Diamonds, M/s. Vs. Union of India AIR 1989 SC 674, Supreme Court considered a case where petitioner wanted to get the relief on the basis of the judgment of the Supreme Court wherein a particular law had been declared ultra vires. The 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."
In State of Karnataka and others Vs. S.M. Kotrayaya and others 1996 (6) SCC 267, Supreme Court rejected the contention that a petition should be considered ignoring the delay and laches on the ground that it has been filed just after coming to know about relief granted by the Court in a similar case as the same cannot furnish a proper explanation for delay and laches. The Court observed that such a plea is wholly unjustified and cannot furnish any ground for ignoring delay and laches.
Same view has been reiterated by Court in Jagdish Lal and others Vs. State of Haryana and others AIR 1997 SC 2366, observing 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."
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."
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.
However, for the benefit of judgment extended to petitioner prospectively, since for this an application has already been submitted to competent authority, let the application be decided,passing a reasoned order in the light of the judgment in Uttar Pradesh and others Vs Pawan Kumar Dwivedi (supra), after affording opportunity of hearing to all concerned parties within one month from the date of production of certified copy of this order before him.
Writ petition is disposed of in the manner as aforesaid.
It is made clear that the Court has not considered the claim and contention of the petitioner on merit.
Order Date :- 1.12.2017 Mukesh Kr.