19 years of battle by Haryana government for an allowance of Rs 7,299, and the High Court
Suspense Crime, Digital Desk : Finally reprimanded it saying it had spent more than the bill in fighting the case. So insignificant was the disputed bill of travel allowance, but a court battle that continued for 19 years over a sum of Rs 7,299 finally came to an end today with the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissing the regular second appeal filed by Haryana government.
Clarifying that where the original amount of suit was less than Rs 25,000, a regular second appeal was not maintainable under Section 102 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
Justice Sudipti Sharma announced this in an order by which the appeal filed by Haryana government and its officials came to end. A suit was filed by one O.P. Khanna of Rohtak, claiming pending travel allowance bill.
According to the record of the case, there were pending bills of travel allowance, as against Rs 7,299, of travelling bills of December 1999 to April 2002, which the appellant had wrongly stopped and demanded their payment with interest.
The Haryana government, however had taken the stand that the TA bills of the respective appellant were being withheld due to budgetary constraints and objections having been raised against the claim of local TA and mileage reimbursement by the employees and that matter has been referred to the Director of Industries, Haryana for necessary advice and clarification. Also, the concerned employee had been informed of the objections raised against his claims.
In 2006, the Civil Judge (Junior Division), Rohtak dismissed the civil suit filed by O.P. Khanna. Aggrieved by it, Khanna filed the first appeal, which was allowed on February 1, 2007 by the District Judge, Rohtak. Against this order of the District Judge, Haryana had filed second appeal.
The state government had stated that, since the amount of original dispute was less than Rs 10,000, the first appeal against the dismissal order was not maintainable. While addressing the court amicus curiae Ankur Mittal stated that as clearly laid down in Section 102 of the CrPC, an appeal against any judgment or order passed by any Court of Civil Judge... Where such amount...does not exceed two thousand five hundred rupees shall not be maintainable. Therefore, appeal is at the threshold unmaintainable.
The High Court had expressed dismay over the tendency of various government departments to fight trivial matters for long years at public expense and to incur several times more expenditure on litigations than the amount involved in the dispute itself which has been wasting court's precious time and public money.
According to the verdict announced by Justice Sudipti Sharma in her judgement "It appears that original amount of suit was Rs 7,299 which is clearly less than Rs 25,000. Thus a regular second appeal does not lie clearly under Section 102 of the CrPC". The Haryana government's appeal was thus dismissed on this ground.
