Doubling costs, High Court raps Haryana for failure to complete timely pleadings

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, December 4

The Punjab and Haryana High Court expressed dismay as Haryana sought the waiver of Rs 10,000 costs imposed on the Haryana Staff Selection Commission. Doubling the costs, the court rapped the State for its failure to complete timely pleadings, despite a significant number of legal advisers, officers, and additional district attorneys.

The order by Justice Sandeep Moudgil came on an application moved on the commission’s behalf, along with an affidavit by Deputy Secretary Krishan Kumar, seeking the waiver. The Bench, on a previous hearing, had observed that the counsel for the respondent-commission, in January, had sought time to file a counter to a replication submitted in a service matter.

The needful was not done despite two opportunities. Another opportunity was granted in March. Yet, the counter was not produced despite a lapse of four months, following which a request was again made without a plausible explanation.

The Bench then granted a last opportunity, subject to payment of Rs 10,000 costs. As the application seeking waiver came up for hearing, Justice Moudgil observed the counsel had “no window left for him or instructions provided by the commission”.

He admitted, on instructions from a law officer, that the replication had not been received, otherwise it could have been downloaded by the commission from the web portal provided by the court to download paper-books. It was available to the state departments and other statutory bodies to avoid delay in legal proceedings.

“The application has been filed by the state government instrumentality without bothering about the expenses to be incurred by this court in listing of this application after filing of the same in the Registry, including various channels like scanning, processing in the listing branch, etc., apart from pressurising the whole manpower assigned with said system in motion for such an unwanted application. In the light of the observations, the application stands dismissed with costs to be increased from Rs 10,000. It shall now be Rs 20,000 on account of the reason for not depositing the earlier cost in time,” he concluded.