Petition filed in 2004, not yet listed claims petitioner in person before Delhi High Court

A strange incident was witnessed in the Delhi High Court before the Bench of BD Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva JJ.

While the mentioning of matters was taking place post-lunch, a petitioner mentioned his matter to be listed for hearing.

Sounds like a routine affair, yes? Not quite.

For this man claimed that he had filed the case in the year 2004 and it had not yet been listed before the Court for hearing. Baffled by this submission, the Bench probed further and questioned the Petitioner more about his matter to which he replied,

“My matter was dismissed by the CAT (Central Administrative Tribunal) and I had assailed the order in a writ filed in 2004. The Registry had told me to cure some defects in my petition, which I complied with but till date my matter has not been listed….

…for 5-6 years after that, I used to contact the Registry on a regular basis and on one such instance they informed me that some of my case papers had gone missing. I have addressed nearly thousand postcards to the Chief Justice (of this Court) regarding my case but to no avail. I have now been banned from entering Court No 1.”

Justice Ahmed then asked what the petitioner had been doing for the past eleven years, and whether a lawyer had been engaged to which the Petitioner replied that he was not employed since his dismissal and he could not afford a lawyer, most of whom charge “close to Rs 50, 000.”

To this Justice Ahmed replied,

“You could have approached the Legal Services Cell. This is not done. We will direct the Registry to find out more about it.”

The Petitioner had also informed the Bench that engaging lawyers from the Legal Services Cell had “not worked out” for him. Furthermore, it appears that the petitioner has been debarred from appearing before the Chief Justice’s court; the petitioner also claimed to have sent a thousand post-cards to the Chief Justice, but had not yet received a response.