Madhya Pradesh High Court: Nandita Dubey, J., allowed the petitioner to file a fresh application for bringing in legal representatives along with an application for condonation of delay and an application for setting aside abatement before the trial court.
The plaintiffs filed an application under Order 22 Rule 3 CPC for bringing the legal representatives of the other deceased plaintiff Naeem Khan on record and it was dismissed. The arguments put forth by the petitioners were that they are “rustic and illiterate villagers” who could not contact and inform the counsel within the time for bringing the legal representatives on record. Further, the suit was initially filed before the Civil Court Balaghat but later on shifted to Lanjhi, which added further trouble to the applicants. Due to this reason, they were not able to contact the counsel and there was a delay in the application for substitution of legal representatives. However, by oversight, the application for setting aside abatement and condonation of delay was not filed.
The trial court, considering that the application under Order 22 Rule 3 of CPC was filed with a delay of nearly four months and no application for setting aside abatement and condonation of delay was filed, dismissed their application.
The Court concurred with the arguments put forth by the petitioners and relied on the decision rendered in the case of Rama Ravalu Gavade v. Sataba Gavadu, (1997) 1 SCC 261. Since the applicants were “rustic and illiterate people” and the delay was only of four months, the Trial Court should not to have adopted the hypertechnical approach and should have granted an opportunity to the applicants to file the application for condonation of delay and for setting aside abatement in the interest of justice. The Trial Court, therefore, was not right in outrightly dismissing the application of applicants. They allowed the petition and set aside the order passed by the Trial Court. The petitioners were granted liberty to file a fresh application for bringing the legal representatives along with an application for condonation of delay and an application for setting aside abatement before the Trial Court.[Naseema Begum v. Mohd. Rajik Nazmi, 2019 SCC OnLine MP 2255, decided on 28-08-2019]
