The Supreme Court declined to hear a plea seeking expeditious pronouncement of reserved judgments by the Allahabad High Court, noting that the petitioner was an advocate who could directly approach the High Court. “This is just browbeating the High Court,” the Bench remarked.
The Supreme Court declined to hear a plea alleging that no advocate is prepared to mention before the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court for the expeditious delivery of judgments that are pending pronouncement.
The bench, led by Justice BV Nagarathna, dismissed the plea as an attempt to browbeat the High Court, adding that the petitioner could instead follow the framework laid down by the Supreme Court in Peela Pahan vs State of Jharkhand a set of guidelines aimed at ensuring timely pronouncement of High Court judgments after they are reserved.
Justice Joymalya Bagchi told the petitioner while observing that, as he was a lawyer, he could directly approach the High Court,
“This is just browbeating the High court,”
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Justice Bagchi added.,
“You are also a lawyer. Please don’t think the Indian bar is divided into territories. You can also approach the High court,”
When the counsel sought permission to appear virtually, the judge advised,
“Write a letter to the chief justice… Such observations will only mean that we are saying HC does not have online hearing facility. Easy to say all this across the bar…”.
The Supreme Court noted that a bench headed by CJI Surya Kant had recently ordered that High Courts must deliver reasoned judgments within three months of reserving them.
It further directed that matters involving personal liberty such as bail applications should ideally be decided by the next day, with bail orders communicated to jail authorities so that an undertrial could be released the same day, or at the latest the following day.
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Where judgments are not pronounced within the three-month period after being reserved, the Supreme Court directed the Registrar General to place the matter before the Chief Justice, who may allow an additional two weeks for compliance.
If there is still no compliance, the case should be allocated to another bench, the top court said. It also asked High Courts to update their websites so that once a reasoned order is uploaded, an SMS is automatically sent to the concerned parties.
To improve transparency, the Supreme Court further said that the websites should reflect the dates on which the judgment was reserved, pronounced, and uploaded.
