Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Supreme Court of IndiaThe Hindu

Synopsis: The appeal that challenged an order by NCLAT, was been dismissed by the Apex Court.

An appeal to an earlier decision by the was rejected by the Supreme Court, arguing that delays are not condonable.

The appeal challenged an order by NCLAT that had already rejected the appeal of the petitioner on two grounds. The first ground was that every appeal was time-barred after 45 days as provided for by the Companies Act, 2013. The second was that even though, on a suo motu move, the Supreme Court had extended the time of appeal due to the Covid pandemic, the top court order had come only on March 23, although this appeal was brought to the NCLAT on March 17.

NCLAT
Live Law

A three judge bench of Chief Justice S. A. Bobde and Justices A. S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian pointed out that the law of limitation has its origin in two Latin maxims, one of which is vigilantibus non dormientibus jura subveniunt, meaning that the law can only support those who are vigilant for their rights and not those who sleep over them.

The decision of the court came on an appeal filed by Sagufa Ahmed & Ors., challenging the order passed by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) which dismissed the case.

Last year the appellants had challenged an NCLT (Guwahati Bench) order before the appellate court. However, their petition was filed after the expiry of the statutory time limit for filing the appeal. The application for condonation of the delay was rejected by the NCLAT.

Advocate Gunjan Singh on behalf of the appellants claimed that, pursuant to Section 421(3) of the Companies Act , 2013, the Appellate Tribunal erred in determining the period of limitation from the date of the NCLT order.

The advocate argued that the Appellate Tribunal refused to take account of the lockdown as well as the order issued by that court on 23 March 2020 in suo motu basis, extending the limitation time with effect from 15 March 2020 for the filing of any proceedings.

The apex court has cleared the meaning of the words “prescribed period”, after considering the arguments, which appear in many sections of the Limitation Act , 1963, after considering the arguments put forward by the appellants, because these words are not specified in Section 2 of the Limitation Act , 1963, the term is used throughout, merely to denote the limitation period.

The court held that the order passed by this court was meant to help diligent litigants who had been prevented from initiating litigation during the limitation time specified by general or special law because of the pandemic and the lockdown.

Thus, with the observation that the appellants can not claim the benefit of the order passed by this court on March, the top court rejected the appeal for extension, even the time up to which delay may be condoned.

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