SRINAGAR, Dec 17: High Court while quashing the order of reopening the four decades old mutations case passed by the Financial Commissioner (Revenue) said the revisional powers must be exercised within a reasonable time as merit cannot justify gross delay.
The court while allowing a writ petition filed by one Vikas Dhar, reprimanded the FC for holding that revisional powers whether invoked in cases of fraud or otherwise must be exercised within a reasonable period. The court said the merits of a case cannot be used as a justification to condone gross delay.
The court said the belated interference, especially where third-party rights have crystallized, leads to legal chaos rather than justice while emphasizing the essence of law of limitation on public policy and certainty. Even in cases where the orders sought to be revised are fraudulent, the exercise of power must be within a reasonable period of the discovery of fraud.
Simply describing an act or transaction to be fraudulent will not extend the time for its correction to infinity; for otherwise the exercise of revisional power would itself be tantamount to a fraud upon the statute that vests such power in an authority”, read the judgment.
It was held by Justice Javed Iqbal Wani in a case challenging an order passed by the Financial Commissioner (Revenue) in 2024, whereby several revenue mutations dating back to 1972, 1981 and 1988 including ownership mutations under the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976 and subsequent gift-based mutations were set aside.
The petitioner contended before the bench after the Financial Commissioner entertained appeals and revisions filed in 2017 by private respondents nearly 40 years after the original mutations were attested.
The Financial Commissioner condoned the extraordinary 40 years delay and proceeded to decide the matter on merits, despite recording that the appellants were aware of the mutations at least since 1983.
Counsel for petitioner-Dhar, contended that the appeals and revisions were hopelessly barred by limitation, that there was suppression of material facts by the private respondents, and that the Financial Commissioner had violated binding directions of the Division Bench to decide limitation as a threshold issue.
The plea of ignorance raised decades later was factually untenable and legally unsustainable. Even in cases involving fraud, the revisional authority must act within a reasonable period from the date of discovery of fraud, and must specifically plead and establish when and how such fraud was discovered”, the court recorded.
The court has taken serious exception to the approach adopted by the Financial Commissioner, who, despite recording a finding that the plea of ignorance was incorrect, proceeded to condone delay by relying upon the merits of the case.
The appeals/revisions ought to have been dismissed as being barred by limitation without going into the merits of the case. The settled principle that limitation is not a mere technicality, and that courts and authorities must decide the issue of delay independently, before examining the merits”, court added
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