The Supreme Court decided to extend the period of limitation of filing cases in various legal fora until further orders in view of hardships faced by litigants due to the alarming Covid-19 situation.
A bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and A S Bopanna agreed to a plea for relaxing the limitation period.
"We have witnessed the second wave of Covid-19 for the past few weeks. It is an alarming situation, which has put litigants to hardship thus all limitation period which was relaxed till March 13, 2021, and all periods of limitation ending on March 14, 2021, should be extended till July 15, 2021," the bench said.
Attorney General K K Venugopal, however, asked the court to extend the period of limitation until further orders.
An application was filed by SC Advocates-on-Record Association seeking restoration of the previous order of the top court passed in March 2020, whereby it had suo motu directed suspension of the limitation period in view of the pandemic.
The bench had then directed to extend a period of limitation, which was ending on March 15, 2020, to "obviate any difficulty and to ensure that lawyers or litigants do not have to come physically to file such proceedings in respective courts or tribunals across the country including this court".
A period of limitation has been prescribed under the general law of limitation or under special laws for filing appeals.
However, on March 8, 2021, the court disposed of the Suo Motu matter, saying that, "Though we have not seen the end of the pandemic, there is a considerable improvement. The lockdown has been lifted and the country is returning to normalcy. Almost all the courts and Tribunals are functioning either physically or by virtual mode".