The Supreme Court has sought a response from Chief Secretaries of all States and Union territories to explain steps taken for weeding out collusion between officials and vested interest in deliberately delaying filing of appeals against judgements. A Bench of Justices Markandeya Katju and T S Thakur said there appeared to be rackets involving government officials and beneficiaries of favourable judgements. The bench said it is high time the malpractice is rooted out. The bench felt that the beneficiary of the judgement may be hand in glove with the officials in the government department who deal with files and files are suppressed for a long period and then the appeal before the High Court or Supreme Court are filed after a long delay to get the appeal dismissed on the ground of delay. The bench said that huge amount of public money or public property may be involved and the government will be the loser on the technical point of limitation in such cases. This racket has been going on for a long time not only before the Supreme Court but also before the High Courts. The apex court passed the order while dealing with an appeal filed by Jharkhand government after a delay of one year.