Legal Perspective

In the Corner Stone and United Phosphorous cases the question was of the large delay in filing the appeal before the apex court. In Corner Stone there was a delay of 650 days. The application seeking the justification of the delay stated 8220;there has occasioned some delay in filing the appeal8221;.

The explanation for this was that it had been caused 8220;due to the time consumed in processingsteps to be taken in the matter departmentally. The details of the procedural steps resulting in the delay, taken by the department, are detailed below8221;.

The court held that the explanation made no sense for the inordinate delay. The application seemed to have been filed 8220;casually8221;. With this the application and the appeals were dismissed. The court did not issue notice to the officer in charge of litigation in the Central Board of Excise and Customs, the revenue secretary in the Union Finance Ministry and the Supreme Court litigation in charge in the Union Law Ministry to find out who was responsible for this delay and what action had been taken against him.

This was all the mo-re necessary because the delay application stated the formula that the government would suffer irreparable harm and injury if the appeal was dismissed on the ground of delay. The revenue involved was not stated anywhere and the extent of the injury or harm in terms of number of industrial units involved or the scale of thegoods involved was not mentioned. The court did not attempt to find the extent of public harm that may be caused and accordingly whether the delay had been used as ruse for getting the appeal dismissed.

In United Phosphorous the application for condoning the delay seems to have been worse. The apex court accordingly dismissed the appeal as time barred by stating that no satisfactory explanation was given for the delay of 347 days in filing the appeal before it. The apex court did not take cognisance of the fact that the Central Agency advocate on record is an employee of the law ministry and being a government servant he cannot have the rare quality of questioning the government officials themselves by documenting their misdeeds of the number of days the concerned officer took to send the brief after the judgment of CEGAT and the number of days a particular officer took to send back the approved draft.

The apex court can easily solve this problem of protecting the public interest by stipulating the filingof a form with every such appeal which would state the dates of when the brief was received from whom of which department by the advocate on record, when it was given for drafting to whom and returned, when it went for opinion to which law officer, when it was returned, when it was sent to which officer of the department for approval, when that officer sent it back and when it was filed. The court can then pinpoint the exact person and find out the bona fides of the delay.

But that is only if the court first perceives that it has a constitutional duty to ensure such accountability in public funds and thereby encourage the honest officer, the honest advocate and the honest businessman.

The third case of Indian Acrylics shows the apex court8217;s perception on such matters when affidavits are filed on behalf of the customs authorities which state no reason for a finance ministry notification and which annex no material in its justification. In this case the government had issued a notification under the CustomsAct stating that a US dollar would be equal to Rs 31.44 for valuation of the imported goods. The court wanted to know the reason why this had been done when according to RBI one US dollar was equal to Rs 25.95.

No explanation came from the government and the 1995 appeal was disposed of in 1999 by stating that in view of the 8220;lapse of time8221; and the 8220;complications which might result8221; by striking down the notification, relief is limited only to the appellant before the court.

Since in all the three cases no particular officer, ruling politician or government advocate was called to account and there was not the slightest whisper of costs on any one of them to be followed by a certificate filed before the court to show such personal recovery, the court has ensured that it would continue to be treated in this manner in such cases. But the ultimate loss is that of the public in whose name and on whose money such holders of power and the courts function.

Shouldn8217;t the court as part of the judicial oath touphold the Constitution set about devising systems that ensure the public interest? To do that is to give honesty a chance in public life.