‘Vigilantibus, non-dermientibus, jura subveniunt’
(the law helps those who are watchful and not those who are asleep)
Delhi High Court: Vinod Goel, J., dismissed Delhi Waqf Board’s applications for condoning the delay of 21 years and restoring a revision petition.
Hashmat Nabi and Swathi, Advocates for the Waqf Board submitted that on 15-05-2018, the newly constituted management took notice of the disposal of the present petition after instructing its standing counsel to prepare a list of matters which have been disposed of. The petition was originally filed though Raman Kapur, Advocate; and B.D. Sharma, Advocate appeared for the Board from 1989 till 1994. However, after that, no appearance was made o behalf of the Board and therefore, the petition was dismissed for non-prosecution. In such background of the case, the application for condonation of 21 years’ delay along with the application for restoration of revision petition was filed.
At the outset, the High Court observed, “it is a well-settled principle of law that a litigant, whether it is an individual or a government body or any legal entity, it owes a duty to be vigilant of its rights and is also expected to be equally vigilant about the judicial proceedings pending in the court of law against it or initiated at its instance.”Holding that the Board could not be permitted to blame the previous counsel after 21 years for not providing the case record, the Court stated, “it appears that the blame is being attributed to the previous counsel with a view to get the delay condoned. After filing the revision petition, the applicant cannot go off to sleep and wake up from a deep slumber after the passage of a long period of 21 years as if the court is a storage of the petitions filed by such negligent litigants. Simply because there is a change in the management cannot give sufficient cause to the applicant to file such an application for restoration after a long period of 21 years has elapsed.” Relying on N. Balakrishnan v. M. Krishnamurthy, (1998) 7 SCC 123, the court reiterated, “the object of the law of limitation is to compel a person to exercise his right of action within a reasonable time as also to discourage and suppress stale, fake or fraudulent claims.” In such view of the matter, the court did not find any merit in the applications and therefore dismissed them. [Delhi Wakf Board v. Mohd. Bi, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 7178, dated 25-01-2019]
