Deprecating the practice of filing appeals belatedly, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has observed that it had become a habit on the part of the officials and this led to loss to the government exchequer. In order to bring a discipline, the court said, imposing costs on such officials was necessary.
A Division Bench of Justices N. Kirubakaran and B. Pugalendhi observed that sometimes even contempt petitions were filed and orders passed on writ petitions would not have been brought to the notice of the authorities. The staff who were negligent in bringing the orders to the notice of the authorities concerned should be dealt with accordingly. Then only discipline could be inculcated in the minds of the staff. Otherwise, the courts would be flooded with ‘n’ number of condone delay petitions and contempt petitions, the judges said.
Getting an order copy from court manually was an old practice and the orders were being uploaded on the official website of the court now. The higher officials could very well check on the website whether any orders had been passed against them, so that they could act accordingly, the court said.
The court was hearing a civil miscellaneous petition preferred by Education Department authorities to condone the delay of 1,069 days in filing the appeal against the order passed by a single judge of the court in a case pertaining to surplus teachers. The court imposed a cost of ₹ 25,000 and directed the State to pay the sum to Aishwaryam Trust here, a health care centre for the elders.
