‘No right to misuse judicial process’: HC imposes Rs 1 lakh cost on petitioners for false submission

The court said that the costs are not being imposed as a punishment but to protect the judicial process from being misused.

Three Nashik-based petitioners had filed a challenge to the order by a divisional joint registrar in 2021, cooperative societies, rejecting their application to condone a delay of 12 years. (File Photo)

OBSERVING THAT court is not a private property and every minute spent on a matter built on falsehood results in genuine matters getting delayed, the Bombay High Court this week imposed Rs 1 lakh as costs on petitioners seeking condonation of delay to file an appeal against a confirmation order of an auction sale. The court said that the costs are not being imposed as a punishment but to protect the judicial process from being misused.

Justice Amit Borkar said while the petitioners had sought to condone the delay of more than 12 years in filing an appeal by claiming that they only got to know of the auction, which took place in 2009, only in 2020, records showed that there was documentary proof that they were aware of the auction, and had acknowledged it in 2011 and 2015.

“In this case, the petitioners’ plea is based on falsehood. The documents placed on record clearly show that they knew about the auction in 2011 and again in 2015. Despite this, they stated on oath that they came to know about the auction only in 2020. This statement is false. The petitioners repeated the same false plea in the delay condonation application and in the writ petition. Such conduct is not a mistake. It is a deliberate attempt to mislead the court,” said the court in the order on November 14.

Three Nashik-based petitioners had filed a challenge to the order by a divisional joint registrar in 2021, cooperative societies, rejecting their application to condone a delay of 12 years.

The high court upheld the order and directed that Rs 1 lakh be deposited by the petitioners with the Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority within four weeks. The court said that the hearing on the case consumed about ninety minutes of judicial time, which ‘belongs to every litigant waiting in the corridor of justice’.

“Other litigants were waiting for their matters to be taken up. They could not be heard because the court was required to deal with a case which should not have been filed in the first place. The petitioners had no right to misuse the judicial process and block precious time of the court. The court must ensure that such conduct does not get repeated,” the court said.