Home Case Index All Cases Indian Laws Indian Laws + HC Indian Laws - 2008 (3) TMI HC This
Forgot password New User/ Regiser ⇒ Register to get Live Demo
2008 (3) TMI 732 - HC - Indian LawsApplication for condonation of delay - unexplained period leading up to the issuance of the letter by the administrator pendente lite - revocation of the grant of probate was not made earlier - APL (Administrator Pendente Lite) powers - petitioner’s attempt at reopening a challenge that had been scoffed at in the earlier proceedings - legatees insist that Sharad and the petitioner is but the same person and refer to a document that the petitioner has relied upon to show that notwithstanding the petitioner’s feigned ignorance of all matters relating to Kamal Mitra’s Will prior to receipt of the first letter issued by the administrator pendente lite, in the petitioner’s acknowledgement in a declaration furnished to a statutory authority that Sharad was one of its key personnel there is admission of Sharad and the petitioner company being one and the same. HELD THAT:- If the delay in the petitioner applying for revocation of the probate is condoned, and the petitioner’s apparent right to seek revocation is recognised, the entire process that culminated in the conclusion of the lis by the Supreme Court order would be undone and reopened for fresh adjudication. The matter is not, as the petitioner simplifies and puts it, of the court being liberal in the matter of condonation of delay to allow a right to be canvassed. Equally, the principal issue is not, as the legatees’ suggest, to affix the petitioner with the knowledge that Sharad had and to consequently find the petitioner’s explanation of the delay to be unmeritorious. Sharad may not have had any legal duty to inform the company (if the company was any more different from himself) upon discovering, although in his capacity as executor, that Reba Mitra had acquired no right to the estate to transfer it to the petitioner. Yet it was so overwhelming a moral duty that a director of a company in Sharad’s place had, even if he were not its controlling shareholder, to inform the company of its imminent loss of its valuable asset, that the fine distinction between a legal duty and a moral duty vanishes. That Sharad had produced and relied upon the petitioner’s lease to assert that notwithstanding Kamal Mitra’s Will his estate passed to his widow, would also show that Sharad was aware that he was also fighting his company’s cause. To ignore all that has gone on before and to accept the petitioner’s simple case and apparent innocence would lead to gross injustice and undoing the finality that is attached to the result on the substance of the dispute following the Supreme Court verdict. The result is that the petitioner’s application for condonation of delay fails as the petitioner is deemed to have had notice for a period much prior to the receipt of the administrator pendente lite’s first letter of August 28, 2007 which the petitioner has chosen to ignore for want of any plausible explanation. As a consequence, the petitioner’s application for revocation of the grant is not taken on board, but even if it were it would have to be dismissed for the only issue therein having been decided in favour of the legatees in the earlier proceedings. The petitioner will pay costs assessed at 2000 GMs. Urgent certified photostat copies of this judgment, if applied for, be supplied to the parties upon compliance with all requisite formalities.
|