Sree Ganesha Apartments Owners vs The Secretary on 6 April, 2010

       

  

  

 
 
  IN THE HIGH COURT OF KERALA AT ERNAKULAM

WP(C).No. 3832 of 2010(D)


1. SREE GANESHA APARTMENTS OWNERS
                      ...  Petitioner

                        Vs



1. THE SECRETARY,
                       ...       Respondent

2. THE SECRETARY,

                For Petitioner  :SRI.N.R.SURESH KUMAR

                For Respondent  :SRI.K.B.MOHANDAS,SC,THRISSUR CORPORATIO

The Hon'ble MR. Justice ANTONY DOMINIC

 Dated :06/04/2010

 O R D E R
                        ANTONY DOMINIC, J.
                       ------------------
                   WP(C) No.3832 of 2010 (D)
                 --------------------------
              Dated, this the 6th day of April, 2010

                           J U D G M E N T

The petitioner is an apartment owners association.

2. Against the order levying building tax, they filed an

appeal before the appellate committee. The appeal was rejected.

Although, remedy against the appellate order was to file an appeal

before the Tribunal, the petitioner filed Ext.P3 before the

Government. By Ext.P7 order dated 28/05/2009, the Government

returned the appeal. Thereafter, the petitioner filed Ext.P4 revision

with an application to condone delay of 643 days, before the

Tribunal. The revision is dated 21/11/2009. By Ext.P6 order, the

Tribunal rejected the application for condonation of delay on the

ground that the Tribunal has power to condone delay up to one

month only. It is challenging Ext.P6 order, this writ petition is filed.

3. The contention raised by the learned counsel for the

petitioner to challenge Ext.P6 is that Ext.P3 appeal was pending

before the Government. According to him, though before a wrong

WP(C) No.3832/2010
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forum, he was prosecuting his appeal and therefore, the period

when the appeal was pending before the Government, should have

been excluded by the Tribunal.

4. In my view, even if this contention of the petitioner is

accepted, the petitioner cannot succeed in this writ petition. This is

for the reason that Ext.P7 order of the Government is dated

28/05/2009. In spite of this order, the petitioner filed the revision

only on 21/11/2009. Therefore, even if delay is counted from

28/05/2009, the petitioner had filed the revision after the expiry of

the period of 30 days prescribed for filing revision. Therefore, even

if the Tribunal had condoned delay of further 30 days, still, the

revision was filed beyond the time prescribed in the Rules. If so, the

Tribunal could have only rejected the revision.

For these reasons, I do not find any merit in the writ petition

and the writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed.

(ANTONY DOMINIC, JUDGE)
jg