New Delhi: The Supreme Court has imposed costs of Rs 5 lakh on the Centre for challenging a Meghalaya High Court order, holding it was "sheer abuse" of the process of law.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Satish Chandra Sharma said there was no occasion or justification for the Union of India to have challenged the order by way of a Special Leave Petition.
"The present petition is sheer abuse of the process of law. The petitioners are cautioned not to file such frivolous petitions in future.
"We are not inclined to interfere with the impugned judgment(s) and order(s) of the High Court. Accordingly, the Special Leave Petition is dismissed with costs for the reason that before the High Court counsel for the petitioner (UoI) submitted that the matter was squarely covered by a previous decision and, accordingly, the High Court had disposed of the matter on the statement of the counsel for Union of India," the bench said.
The top court was hearing an appeal against the High Court order which upheld a Central Administrative Tribunal judgement.
The High Court had disposed of the matter after noting the Central government's submission that a similar plea had been rejected earlier.
"We, accordingly, impose a fine of Rs.5,00,000 to be paid by the petitioners which shall be deposited in Account of the Armed Forces Battle Casualties Welfare Fund, Canara Bank, Branch South Block, Defence Headquarters, within eight weeks...
"After depositing the said amount in the aforesaid fund, the petitioners to file proof of such deposit with the Registry of this Court within a week thereafter," the bench said.