- Case number
- W.P.(IPD) Nos.3 and 4 of 2023
- Court
- Madras High Court
- Date of judgment
- Judge
- Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy W. P
- Outcome
- Remanded
Headnote
Applications deemed abandoned under section 21(2) for failure to file counter statements, quashed. The Registry relied on Rules 17 and 18 and on a dispatch record showing a status of success, Rule 18(2) deeming a communication served at the time of sending the email. The Court held that section 21(2) runs the two month period from the receipt by the applicant of the copy of the notice of opposition. Rule 18(2) incorporates a legal fiction which, construed literally, would mean no more than proof of transmission, and so construed it would not be in consonance with the section, particularly given that the statute does not incorporate deemed receipt and that a substantive right of the applicant is at stake. The prescribed time limit therefore runs only from the date of receipt of the email, and a dispatch record does not qualify as evidence of receipt.
Headnote by BRB Legal, written from the judgment: a summary for reference, not legal advice.