TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (5) TMI 763
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....lication I.A No. 991 of 2026 is an application praying for condonation of 193 days delay in refiling of CA (AT) (Ins) No. 291 of 2026. 2. When the appeal came up for hearing on 16.02.2026, the Ld. Sr. Counsel for the Appellant sought liberty to file an additional affidavit in support of the application praying for condonation of refiling delay. 3. In pursuance of the liberty granted by this Tribunal, the Applicant has filed an additional affidavit giving explanation for delay and outlined the dates on which defects were notified and removed which is as reproduced below:- Date of Scrutiny Date of curing defect and refiling Delay after deduction of the 7 day period permitted for curing such defects 21.07.2025 28.07.2025 ....
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....that genuine, sincere and timely endeavours were made by the Applicant to remedy the defects at serial no. 12. It was stated that NCLAT Registry had not specifically indicated the handwritten pages which required to be substituted by typed copies but mentioned only three pages. Each time the typed copies were submitted, the Registry indicated more copies to be typed out and as this recurred, it became time consuming and added to the delay. It was also added that the Applicant had to procure legible copies from their old records to prepare true typed copies which was a protracted process as it entailed obtaining of source documents, verbatim typing followed by proof-reading. It was further added that the process of reconstruction of the non-....
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....t the delay was bonafide and not intentional was bereft of substance. Perusal of the list of defects placed by the Applicant themselves at page 17 of their additional affidavit would show that most of the defects were routine, procedural defects such as unsigned master index, mistakes in pagination, blanks in pages, formatting errors, lack of payment proof, power of attorney issues etc. and had the Applicant been diligent these could have all been cured in one-go without avoidable delay. Furthermore, the explanation for delay offered by the Applicant with respect to translation of vernacular documents and typing out of hand-written documents on extraneous factors like absence of old employees familiar with the documents was a specious plea ....
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....pedantic. Be that as it may, the Applicant cannot be rightfully absolved of their responsibility to satisfy the Court by providing satisfactory and sufficient explanation to justify the delay particularly so when the magnitude of delay of 193 days is manifestly huge. Hence, what needs to be seen is whether the Applicant has satisfactorily established sufficient, coherent and credible defect-wise and date-wise explanation for the delay and if not, the condonation of refiling delay application deserved to be rejected. 9. This brings us to the explanation offered by the Applicant in explaining the major delay of 109 days pointed out by the Registry on 01.8.2025. The reasons put forth by the Applicant justifying the delay was that the NCLAT ....
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....the Applicant has averred that the said employee had retired in 2020 while the present appeal has been filed in 2025. The contention of the Applicant that the delay was 153 days and not 193 days is also not acceptable as the Applicant has tried to artificially compress the duration of delay by discounting the 7 days' time permitted for curing the defects from each round of defect as and when they were cured. This methodology of computing the period of delay is not correct. As long as the defects are not fully cured, the period of 7 days' time allowed to correct the defects as and when pointed out by the Registry cannot be precluded from the calculating the total period of refiling delay. In our opinion, had the Applicant been more alert, ca....