The Supreme Court has imposed a penalty of Rs. 5 lakh on the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) and NTPC for urging it to allow withdrawal of their appeal, saying they cannot treat the court according to their own convenience. A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice N.V. Ramana on Thursday (1 October 2015) took exception to the petitioners KSEB and NTPC seeking to withdraw their plea and said the withdrawal will be subject to payment of Rs.5 lakh to the Supreme Court Legal Services Authority.
Confirming that KSEB and NTPC were imposed Rs 5 lakh cost, counsel Vikas Upadhyay representing respondents Essar Power MP Ltd on Friday said the court did not appreciate the way the withdrawal of the case was sought after the judges had gone through four volumes of the petition running into 890 pages.
Imposing the cost, the bench said: “If you wanted to withdraw, why did you in first instance file it and persuaded us to issue notice.” This is not a drawing room where you can walk in and walk out at your own ease, it added.
It is noteworthy that the above appeals were listed in Court No. 8 as Item No. 12. The Supreme Court had issued notice in this matter on 11 May 2015 and had made the notice returnable in 6 weeks. However, when these matters were listed on 1 October, the appellants made requests to withdraw their appeals, and these requests were not taken kindly by the court. The court expected that if these appeals were sought to be withdrawn, at least a letter should have been circulated in advance of their intention to do so, so that the judges would not have studied the bulky files. It is pertinent to mention that in the Supreme Court there is a practice of circulating letter in advance, a few days before the listing date if the concerned advocate does not want to argue the matter for some specific reason and wants some adjournment, etc. On the basis of the letter circulated, the judges do not read the files in advance. In the Supreme Court, generally the judges come well-prepared after reading the files, which are generally bulky. So, as a courtesy to the judges, a letter is generally circulated in advance if due to some genuine reasons, the advocates do not want to argue the case on the next date. [with inputs from IANS]
