Ravi Kumar vs Union Of India And Others

Arguments heard on both the applications.

Order reserved.

The order of the Bench consisting of Hon'ble Ms. Justice Sunita Gupta, Member (J) and Hon'ble Lt Gen. Philip Campose, Member (A) in the above

mentioned MAs was pronounced in the

Open Court by Hon'ble Ms. Justice Sunita Gupta, Member (J) today i.e., 23rd June, 2020.

Vide this order, we shall dispose of MA 2099/2019 for recall of the order dated 22.01.2019 and restoration of MA 498/2019, whereby the applicant

sought grant of leave to appeal under Sections 30 and 31 of the Armed Forces Tribunal Act, 2007 (AFT Act' for brief) against the order dated

19.05.2015 passed in O.A. No. 150 of 2013 along with MA 499/2019, whereby condonation of delay in filing the application for leave to appeal was

sought, which were dismissed in default vide order dated 22.01.2019, and also MA 2100 of 2019 seeking conodnation of delay in filing MA 2099/2019

for recall of the order dated 22.01.2019.

We have heard learned counsel for the parties and perused the record.

It is submitted by the learned counsel for the applicant that due to unavoidable circumstances, he could not appear on 22.01.2019, which resulted in

dismissal of MA 498/2019 and MA 499/2019.At the time of hearing of this application, on 23.09.2019, the applicant/his counsel was informed that no

reason has been disclosed as to what prevented the applicant or his counsel to appear on the date fixed which resulted in dismissal of the applications

for non-prosecution. Thereupon, the counsel for the applicant sought time to file better particulars. However, same were not filed.

As stated above, in the application for recall of the order dated 22.01.2019, the only averment made is that the counsel could not appear due to

unavoidable circumstances. However, 'unavoidable circumstances' have not been explained in the entire application which prevented the counsel to

appear on that day. The application under Section 22 of the AFT Act read with Section 5 of the Limitation Act seeking condonation of delay in filing

the application states that the applicant could not appear for want of information and make the arrangement/reservations. Thereafter, due to financial

hardship and illness in the family, he could not contact his counsel and, therefore, the application for recall of the order dated 22.01.2019 could not be

filed in time.

Even the averments made in this application are quite vague as the applicant has not explained as to who was ill in the family and how the applicant

has now come to know about the dismissal of the applications. Under the circumstances, neither the applicant nor his counsel has given any

satisfactory reason either for condonation of delay in filing the application seeking condonation of delay of six months in filing the application or for

recall of the order dated 22.01.2019, whereby the application for grant of leave to appeal filed by the applicant was dismissed for non-prosecution.

That being so, both these applications i.e. MA 2099/2019 and MA 2100/2019 are dismissed.

Pronounced in open court on this 23th day of June, 2020.