The Supreme Court recently expressed astonishment over a litigant’s decision to submit a 60-page synopsis to challenge a mere five-page order from the Allahabad High Court. The High Court had previously denied the litigant anticipatory bail in a forgery case in July.
A bench comprising Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal, in their order dated September 27, imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the litigant for the lengthy submission. The court directed the litigant to donate the amount to a charitable organization. The bench remarked,
“There is an application filed by the petitioner for seeking permission to file a lengthy synopsis and list of dates. The impugned order runs into five pages. However, the synopsis is of more than 60 pages, which was uncalled for in the facts of the case. Therefore, we reject the application and while we do so, we direct the petitioner to pay costs of Rs 25,000 by way of a donation to any institution carrying out charitable work.”
Interestingly, the Supreme Court initially contemplated imposing the costs on the advocate-on-record. However, they refrained from doing so after the counsel argued that such a move might set an undesirable precedent. The counsel clarified that the extensive pleadings were drafted based on the explicit instructions of the accused-appellant.
Despite the lengthy synopsis, the apex court issued a notice on the appeal challenging the High Court’s denial of anticipatory bail to the litigant. The Supreme Court had earlier granted the accused appellant interim anticipatory bail on medical grounds, provided he cooperated with the ongoing investigation.
In a related context, the same bench had emphasized in August the importance of avoiding bulky synopses in submissions. Furthermore, last year, Justice Ravindra Bhat of the Supreme Court highlighted the pressing need to curtail pleadings or establish a page limit for them, stating,
“We have to curtail pleadings, our tendency to spread over reams and reams of pages, questions of law, grounds etc. We need to do that.”
