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Judgment
R. Jayasimha Babu, J.—The appeals have been filed against the order of the learned single Judge declining to condone the delay of over
1000 days in filing the application to bring on record the legal representatives of the deceased second defendant in the suit. The second defendant
had been impleaded in the suit as a guarantor for certain amounts disbursed by the appellant to the first respondent company. The first respondent
company, it transpires, was directed to be wound up. Learned counsel is unable to tell us as to whether the plaintiff/appellant had made its claims
before the Official Liquidator. The security for the disbursement is the mortgage created by that company of its assets. The company was directed
to be wound up way back in the year 1988, about a year after the institution of the suit. The second defendant is stated to have died in the year
1994. In the affidavit filed to set aside the abatement and to condone the delay in filing the application all that is stated by the Deputy Manager of
the appellant is that he had collected information about the legal representatives of the deceased second defendant, but had omitted to give the
same to the company''s counsel till the year 1997, for a long period of nearly three years. This kind of a casual approach on the part of the officers
of the Corporation cannot be put forth by the Corporation as a reason for seeking condonation of the delay that has occurred on account of the
irresponsible and inefficient manner in which it''s own officers have worked. One can only hope that their levels of efficiency has since improved.
Learned counsel for the appellant company, however, submitted that the Courts should take a very liberal view in the matter and he placed
reliance on the decision of the Apex Court in the case of State of Haryana Vs. Chandra Mani and others, : That was a case to which the State was
a party and the Court pointed out that where the public interest is involved, the Government being very much the guardian of the public interest, the
Court should not treat the State in the same manner as it would treat any other litigant while considering the prayer for condonation of delay. The
delay in that case was 119 days.
The extent of delay involved in this case, besides being ten times of that, is also not a delay which has occurred in the litigation concerning the
Governemnt. The appellant is a corporation registered under the Companies Act, which has ample functional autonomy and which Corporation
was apparently created with a view to ensure that it would function with expedition and with efficiency. Such a Corporation cannot pretend to
justify its own inefficiency and lack of attention to matters which are in litigation and claim that the delay of as much as three years should be
condoned for the asking. This is hardly the kind of discipline that is expected of a Corporation which is expected to promote the cause of
industrialisation in the State. We do not find any merit in the appeal. The appeal is dismissed.