great public importance for grant of such relief against the State would result in loss to the State public money. His contention, therefore, was that impugned judgment by which relief had been granted to the writ petitioner (respondent here) refusing to consider the ground of laches - undue delay of 20 years, urged on behalf of the State against grant of such relief was liable to be interfered with and set aside as that made by the High Court in wrong exercise of its discretionary power under Article 226 of the Constitution. The judgments of the High Court in 191 other writ petitions rendered by following the judgment impugned in this appeal were also liable to be anulled as a consequence. Shri Ashok Desai, in his reply to the submissions made on behalf of the respondent and others who had obtained judgments in their favour from the High Court on the basis of the judgment impugned in this appeal, did not dispute the position that certain judgments of the High Court in similar matters had not been appealed against by the State in this Court. But, according to him such thing had happened obviously under an impression that they were stray cases and not fit enough to be appealed against before this Court, having regard to smallness of the amounts involved. When the High Court allowed certain other writ petitions based on its earlier judgments in similar matters, the State, according to him, inevitably filed in this Court in respect of latter judgments, but, unfortunately those had come to be dismissed. But, when the High Court allowed the writ petition by the judgment under appeal and when that judgment was followed in allowing other 191 writ petitions and when innumerable persons were trying to take advantage of the said judgments of the High Court to file further writ petitions which was estimated to involve an expenditure of about 400 crores of rupees for the State of Maharashtra, there was no escape from filing the Special Leave Petition out of which the present appeal has arisen and other to wriggle out of the unanticipated situation.