JUDGMENT A.U. Khan, Member (Judicial). - A suit was filed by Mst. Dhanpatti under section 176 Z.A. and L.R. Act. Preliminary decree passed on 17-8-1983. Defendant Vishwanath filed an appeal in Commissioners court. The appellants were five. One appellant Rasool died on 10-11-1985. Substitution application moved by four appellants and by Ali Hassan, son of deceased on 11-2-1987. An application also moved under section 5, Limitation Act. Additional Commissioner by his order dated 4-7-1988 has declined to set aside the abatement : the explanation for the delay of 15 months or thereabout was found unsatisfactory. The appeal ended in dismissal. So, this second appeal is lodged by defendant Vishwanath. 2. Heard the learned counsel for the parties, the record has been perused. 3. Admittedly one of the appellants Rasool died on 10-11-1985. The co-appellants and the son of deceased, Ali Hassan moved a substitution application on 11-2-1987. The delay is of 15 months or thereabouts. The learned counsel for the respondents has urged that when the exercise of discretion by the Additional Commissioner is based on supportable material the same should not be lightly disturbed. The precedent is AIR 1962 SC 361 . This elucidates that even after sufficient cause has been shown a party is not entitled to the condonation of delay in question as a matter of right. The proof of sufficient cause is a condition precedent for the exercise of discretionary jurisdiction vested in the court by section 5, L.R. Act. Also AIR 1964 Allahabad 534 (FB) is cited. Paragraph 9 is clear : "A court of appeal would not interfere with the exercise of discretion by the court below, if the discretion has been exercised in good faith after giving due weight to relevant matters and without being swayed by irrelevant matters. If two views are possible on the question, then also the court of appeal would not interfere, even though it may exercise discretion differently, when the case comes initially before it." 4. The counsel for appellant stressed that appellant Vishwanath are from rural areas not knowing such legal technicalities. The application for setting aside abatement should be allowed. He stated that in a country like ours where there is no much poverty, ignorance and illiteracy, it would not be fair to presume that every one knows that on death of a respondent, legal representatives are to be brought on record within a certain time. The application for setting aside abatement should be allowed. He stated that in a country like ours where there is no much poverty, ignorance and illiteracy, it would not be fair to presume that every one knows that on death of a respondent, legal representatives are to be brought on record within a certain time. I see this in a different perspective. The substitution application is moved by advocate who certainly knows all the incidents and requirements of legal obligations. To treat advocate and his client separately when the engagement makes them one for a purpose is to say the unsay able. The technical rules of Evidence Act, Civil Procedure Code, Limitation Act are measure of the manners that characterise the outlook of a sophisticated society. These artificial acts dovetail a chaos of controversy into a structure, clarity and a purpose. They make compelling demands on those who give themselves to such technical conception. To make the acts technical is to make them artistic - is to make them more and more perfect. "All the artificial is conceived in the ingenious brain of man and is wrought with mental skill born out of inventive genius (Psyshic Factors of Civilization : Lester Word pp. 287-288). So one cannot do away with technical rules and give scope to confusion and chaos in that name of helping poor and ignorant. It is not by accommodation with illiteracy but light with it, not indulgence but punishing ignorant manners that leads to their eradication. Will more illiteracy and vigorous ignorance, as it feared by the turn of century, justify condonation of say, 12 or more years? This dulgence reflects instincts and passions that romanticise an essentially premitive society. The Advocates contention is no broad in its sweep, is so radical in its conclusion, and general in its formulation as to be unhistoric in the breath of all past precedents. From the overwhelming need to explain the happening of each day from the date of delay and default, the explanation more cogent and credible the better, rulings celebrated in a long line of decisions, not carefully taken care for, spread over a long period, there is this argument to allow cotright concession of years in recognition of ignoring and poor manners. This will not do. This will not do. Surely, the presumption is not apt that every suiter knows the legal incidents caused by the death of a respondent in an appeal going apace, but do they know that plaint has to show a cause of action or to have verification or a restoration application is in order on dismissal of a suit Social cultures where outlook is predominantly premitive, say, as in Afghanistan or Yeman, insight into forms or rules of procedure in litigation, as against the substance of the things have no significance. This is a burden they do not lay on the moods, attitudes and reactions of a tribal people. We have carried this burden, cheerfully or not, for over 200 years. It is now a part of procedural heritage for which no need is now to disburden the appellants. Lay the burden - make the demand - the response responsible - a significant step is taken in prompt resolution of dispute according to rules of the Act. The acts are not here to adopt but to participate in, not to have, but to do and to be. And not even to be, but to keep becoming - a process, an orientation, a dynamic. (W.C. Smith : Modernisation of a Traditional Society, p. 18). Such outright condonation of 8 years of delay will discourage the appellants from bearing their large and fair share of legal responsibility to courts. It rests upon the reverence people show and the obedience they give to rules which they regard as obligatory. For courts to search ultimate value or furnish comprehensive guidance to society is to violate the basic postulate of the Act and to assume a role for which man on the bench were not splitted because of many reasons. To go beyond the plain meaning of order XXII, Rule 9(2) CPC is to indulge in readily disproved fictions. If the criterion of condonation of delay is a vague and vagrant as in the elaboration of the Advocate all will depend upon the mood and habits of a people. Acts will come to little. It will injure the cause that it seeks to share and serve. Faith has virtue in following the technical and procedural. It summons men to the performance of their best. Its spritual and is to nourish the creativity of appellants. 5. Acts will come to little. It will injure the cause that it seeks to share and serve. Faith has virtue in following the technical and procedural. It summons men to the performance of their best. Its spritual and is to nourish the creativity of appellants. 5. Ignorance of law was not held an admissible plea whenever this was set forth as a truth-in-fact of the then Raman Society. "No excuse" became a credal faith of substantive law. This through the centuries has functioned as guide-post rather than a hitchpost". "The law does not scruple, if need be, to say that the fact must be deemed to be such, whether it be so in truth or not. The law is the theory of things, as received and acted upon within the courts of justice, and this theory may or may not conform to the reality of things as they are. Partly by deliberate design and partly by the errors and accidents of historical development, law and fact, legal theory and truth of things, may fail in complete coincidence. We have ever to distinguish that which exists in deed and in truth from that which exists in law. (Salmond on Jurisprudence, Twelfth Edition : P.J. Fitzgerald p. 10). 6. It is apt to remember that many rules of procedure in their practical operation are substantially equivalent to rules of substantive law. "The limitation of actions is the procedural equivalent of the prescription of rights. The former is the operation of time in severing the bond between right and remedy, the latter is the operation of time in destroying the right. The former leaves an imperfect right subsisting, the latter leaves no right at all (Solmond on Jurisprudence, Twelfth Edition, Fitzerald, p.128). It is procedural law (read technical law) only in a form rather than in substance. 7. Still one more concern that confronts in handling a single appeal. The historian is not really interested in the unique, but in what is general in the unique, just the converse for the judge. He is to decide whether each appellant has shown carefulness, attentiveness, conscientious, profound concern to have the heir of respondent brought on record or negligence. How, then, to define and decide whether and appellant is more or less of this-poor, illiterate and ignorant? How to reflect this criterion in specific case as each appellant comes along ? He is to decide whether each appellant has shown carefulness, attentiveness, conscientious, profound concern to have the heir of respondent brought on record or negligence. How, then, to define and decide whether and appellant is more or less of this-poor, illiterate and ignorant? How to reflect this criterion in specific case as each appellant comes along ? Lytton Strachy, in his mischievous way said. "Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian, ignorance which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits" (Preface to Eminent Victorians). Is the Judge to appreciate equally both the omission to substitute and selection to lodge the appeal ? 8. I think man can be divided, like so many classifications, in two groups : those who respond positively to any stimulus or happening and those who respond negatively to any stimulus. The appellant, after an appeal is lodged within time, the death of a respondent taking place, is found quiescent and recessive, he subsides in himself and shrinks away from effort to inform his Advocate or Court, fails and falters to show sufficient cause of Order XXII rule 9(2) CPC. He respond negatively. To give such an appellant an advantage is to reward negligence. 9. With profound respect, I am to govern myself according to AIR 1986 (12) SC 503. This is Division Bench of Supreme Court. 10. The appeal is allowed. The order of Additional Commissioner dated 4-7-1986 is set aside. The substitution application of appellant Vishwanath and Ali Hassan with delay of 15 months is allowed. In consequence abatement is set aside. The first appeal comes under consideration. Additional Commissioner to decide in accordance with his responsibility under law.