M A I N   N E W S

Too late for justice, Mr Zakhmi
Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 18
For the last 24 years M.L. Zakhmi waited for his petition to come up for hearing before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. When it was finally taken up this month, the court ruled that it is too late for it to do anything about it.

Cases like this, the high court admitted, gave a new life to the cliché “justice delayed is justice denied”. Justice K. Kannan said while disposing the case that had it been taken up with alacrity, the case could have “obtained a different dispensation”.

The petitioner, a bank employee, was not present in the court and even the counsel, Satya Pal Jain, admitted that the petitioner had not been in touch with him for long.

There are approximately 2.5 lakh pending cases before the high court and it is suspected that many of the petitioners are no more there to pursue their grievances. When some of these cases are suddenly listed, the counsels are often at a loss in the absence of complete records or instructions. The delay also tends to change the course of the outcome.

Zakhmi had filed the case in 1988, when he was working with the State Bank of Patiala. His counsel Satya Pal Jain had asserted his client was aggrieved by an order issued by the bank in August 1986 “denying him a chance to even be considered for promotion from middle management grade scale-II to grade scale III”.

Justice Kannan ruled: Unfortunately for the petitioner, the matter has come up for hearing only now. And even after the case has been posted for hearing, there is no representation from the respondents in spite of notice having been served.

“Twenty four year later, to ask the authorities to reappraise the petitioner's ability to hold the promotion post, is an exercise in futility and its efficacy is lost in the passage of time... relief cannot be granted to the petitioner mechanically, for it shall be unrealistic to consider the petitioner's suitability to promotion for the period when he was actually in service in the same post … the writ petition is under the circumstances dismissed as it is not, in my view, possible to direct the reappraisal. ”

The high court will now have one case less to deal with. As for the petitioner, his whereabouts and reaction are not known.