IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA C.R. No.489 of 2006 BIRENDRA KUMAR SINGH Versus STATE OF BIHAR & ORS ----------- 5 31/7/2008 Heard counsel for the petitioner and counsel for opposite party nos. 1 and 2. Despite service of notice on opposite party no.3 and appearance filed through an Advocate no one appears to oppose the prayer in this civil revision application. This Court, having taken into consideration earlier order dated 1.2.2007 confining issuance of notice in the present case only on the quantum of cost while allowing prayer of opposite party no.3 for accepting its written statement, would find that the opposite party no.3 has deliberately caused delay of more than three years in filing its written statement. In the three years the plaintiff had not only taken steps for doing regular pairvi in the suit but had also adduced evidence of ten witnesses and therefore when now the written statement is filed, everything has to begin afresh denovo. Such a situation infact has been occasioned only because the failure on the part of the opposite party no.3, the Municipality in filing its written statement in time. There being no dispute that the notice/summons on the statutory authority, namely, opposite party no.3, the Special Officer, Municipal Corporation, Siwan had been served way back in the year 2001 itself and thus if the court below had, for the reasons recorded in the 2 impugned order, allowed the Municipality and its Special Officer to contest the suit, it had also a duty to ensure that the loss sustained to the plaintiff was adequally compensated. Keeping in view that the Municipality has put the clock back, this Court would therefore direct that the opposite party no. 3 in order to contest the suit must pay a sum of Rs. 6,000/- to the petitioners within a period of two months from the date of receipt/ production of a copy of this order, whereafter only the written statement of opposite parties would be accepted and they will be allowed to contest the suit on merits. With the aforementioned observation and directions this application is disposed of and the impugned order of cost of Rs. 600/- is modified by enhancing it to Rs. 6000/- as indicated above. ( Mihir Kumar Jha, J. ) Abhay Kumar