Vinod Kumar Gupta, Dipak Prakas Kundu ( 1 ) THERE will be an order in terms of prayer (a ). ( 2 ) WITH the consent of the parties the appeal is treated as on day's list and the appeal and the application for stay are disposed of together. ( 3 ) IN the appeal filed under the Central Excise Act, 1944 by appellant before the Respondent No. 4, an application was made under Section 35f of the Act for waiver of the pre-deposit and the amount of duty and penalty etc. The Respondent No. 4 passed an order on 24-10-1997 whereby, in exercise of the power under Section 35f of the Act directed the appellants to pay an amount of Rs. 50 lacs within a period of three months from the date of passing of the order. Aggrieved the appellants came up to this Court by filing Writ Application under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. The learned Single Judge vide his judgment dated 26th March, 1998 refused to interfere with the aforesaid order of the Respondent No. 4 but extended the period by further three months to make the deposit of Rs. 50 lacs. It is against this judgment that the present appeal under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent has been preferred by the appellants. ( 4 ) THE main ground which was urged by the appellants before the Respondent No. 4 was that the Appellant No. 1 is a sick company and that the matter has already been referred to the BIFR and that an operating agency has also been appointed. In this background, the appellant was to suffer undue hardship if the waiver of pre-deposit was not ordered in its favour to the extent of the entire amount. We were also told that the appeal was filed in the year 1994 and is pending disposal since then. ( 5 ) AFTER hearing the learned Advocates for the parties and considering all aspects of the matter, in particular, the fact that the Appellant No. 1 is a wholly owned Central Government Company and that the matter regarding appellant No. 1 is pending consideration before the BIFR and that Appellant No. 1 has been declared a sick company, indeed the hardship as pleaded by Appellant No. 1 is a factor which could not have been ignored or over-looked by the Respondent No. 4. To that extent, in our view, Respondent No. 4 erred in not granting waiver to the extent of the full amount as requested by Appellant No. 1. ( 6 ) WE, therefore, feel that the learned Single Judge did not correctly appreciate this aspect of the matter. ( 7 ) FOR the aforegoing reasons, therefore, we allow the appeal and while setting aside the judgment of the learned Single Judge and Respondent No. 4, direct the Respondent No. 4 to hear the appeal filed by the appellants without insisting on pre-deposit. Since the appeal is pending for almost four years we further direct the Respondent No. 4 to expedite the hearing of the appeal and to ensure that the appeal is heard and disposed of without any delay and preferably within a period of three months from today. ( 8 ) THE appeal is finally disposed of. No order as to costs. ( 9 ) THE learned Advocate for the appellants undertakes to communicate this order to Respondent No. 4 within one week from receipt of the signed copy of this dictated order.