Litigation is too important to be left to lawyers
If you are in appeal, normally you feel relaxed when your case is handed over to a competent lawyer, but that’s not correct; you should also monitor your case as advised by the Delhi High Court in a recent case we are carrying today. “Engaging a counsel to handle a case before a court or tribunal is not enough”, advised the High Court. In this case the Tribunal had ordered pre deposit and bank guarantee with which the assessee complied but this fact was not known to the Tribunal and so the appeal was dismissed and this fact was not known either to the department or the assessee. In their blissful ignorance the assessee and the Range continued with the renewed bank guarantee years after the appeal was dismissed. Obviously there was some communication gap and the reason for this was the death of the counsel for the party.
It is alright that once in a way death of counsel results in such communication gaps but this case reveals another weak link in the department’s functioning. The department continued demanding and accepting bank guarantees for seven years after the appeal was dismissed! Nobody is to blame for this; there is absolutely no system in place to monitor the status of appeals. The Range Officers is not aware of what happens in the Tribunal and he continues merrily with the knowledge or ignorance that he is destined to have.. This is because the department has too many wings – Adjudication, Review, Tribunal, Legal etc,. and because of too many wings they fly in different directions. It’s a miracle that cases are tracked and action initiated; most of the time there are no links.