There was a delay of more than ten or twelve years in filing the petition since the accrual of the cause of complaint, and this delay, contended the respondents, was sufficient to disentitle the petitioners to any relief in a petition under Article 32 of the Constitution. We do not think this contention should prevail with us. In the frst place, it must be remembered that the rule i which says that the Court may not inquire into belated and stale claims is not a rule of law, but a rule of practice based on sound and proper exercise of discretion, and there is no inviolable rule that whenever there is delay, the court must necessarily refuse to entertain the petition. Each case must depend on its own facts. The question, as pointed out by Hidayatullah, C.J., in Tilockchand Motichand v. H.B. Munshi MANU/SC/0127/1968 : [1969]2SCR824 "is one of discretion for this Court to follow from case to case. There is no lower limit and there is no upper limit-. It will all depend on what the breach of the Fundamental Right and the remedy claimed are and how the delay arose." Here the petitioners were informed by the Commissioner, Aurangabad Division by his letter dated 18th October, 1960 and also by the Secretary of the Revenue Department in January 1961 that the rules of recruitment to the posts of Deputy Collector in the reorganised State of Bombay had not yet been unified, and that the petitioners continued to be governed by the rules of ExHyderabad State and the Rules of 30th July, 1959 had no application to them. The petitioners were, therefore, justified in proceeding on the assumption that there were no unified rules of recruitment to the posts of Deputy Collector and the promotions that were being made by the State Government were only provisional, to be regularised when unified rules of recruitment were made. It was only when the petition in Kapoor's case was decided by the Bombay High Court that the petitioners came to know that it was the case of the State Government in that petition-and that case was accepted by the Bombay High Court-that the Rules of 30th July, 1959 were the unified rules of recruitment to the posts of Deputy Collector applicable throughout the reorganised State of Bombay. The petitioners thereafter did not lose any time in filing the present petition. Moreover, what is challenged in the petition is the validity of the procedure for making promotions to the posts of Deputy Collector-whether it is violative of the equal opportunity clause-and since this procedure is not a thing of the past but is still being followed by the State Government, it is but desirable that its Constitutionality should be adjudged when the question has come before the court at the instance of parties
