“4. The appellant in the application under consideration has contended that the impugned decree and judgment is of date 24.07.2015, whose certified copies were applied on 11.08.2015, which were prepared on 18.08.2015. In terms thereof the appellants/plaintiffs had the time till 30.08.2015 to file the present appeal. Present appeal was filed on 10.02.2016. It is the averment of the appellant/applicant that on 18.09.2015, father of the Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs met with an accident and got severely injured; thereafter the Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs on 19.09.2015 had to rush to his home town in Patna as there was none to look after his father where two months time was taken for recovery of father of Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs. It is also averred that on returning from home town, Counsel for appellants/ plaintiffs had to shift his residence in last week of November 2015 as well as the office renovation was under process due to which the files kept in the office of Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs were shifted to newly constructed office-cum-residence of Counsel for appellants/ plaintiffs and during shifting, the file of the present matter was misplaced by the staff of Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs. Also has been laid that in second week of January, the file of present matter was located by Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs after which the Counsel for appellants/plaintiffs applied for certain relevant material documents from concerned departments and thereafter on receipt of documents, the present appeal was filed. In the application under consideration, it has been prayed that delay of 108 days in filing appeal be condoned. In fact, there is delay of 163 days in filing appeal in view of above elicited facts, since appeal was filed on 10.02.2016. Ld. Counsel for appellant/applicant has relied upon the case of Manoharan Vs. Sivarajan & Ors., Civil Appeal No. 10581 of 2013, decided by Supreme Court of India , on 25.11.2013, submitting that the 'sufficient cause' should be considered with pragmatism injustice oriented process approach rather than the technical detention of sufficient cause for explaining every day's delay. The factors which are peculiar to and characteristic of the functioning of pragmatic approach in justice-oriented process. The Court should decide the matters on merits unless the case is hopelessly without merit.”
