The Supreme Court faced difficulty in understanding a judgment written by retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Justice Sureshwar Thakur, known for his highly complex legal language.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court faced a challenging moment while trying to understand a judgment passed by retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, Justice Sureshwar Thakur, who is well-known for writing extremely complex and difficult-to-understand judgments.
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A Bench comprising Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta and Vijay Bishnoi was hearing a case that involved a ruling delivered by Justice Thakur (along with Justice Vikas Suri) on March 20, which had declared Section 3G of the National Highways Act, 1956 unconstitutional.
The complexity of the language used in the order sparked reactions from the Bench as well as the lawyers present in court.
While reviewing the order, Justice Surya Kant humorously remarked “Anyways, now that he has demitted the office, he has taken over as the chairperson of the NRI Commission of Punjab. So, now it’s the burden or responsibility of the NRIs.”
To this, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta smiled and replied “The NRIs will now have to understand English, not the resident Indians.”
Justice Surya Kant continued the light-hearted exchange by saying “Most of them are in Canada or Europe, so they will understand.”
The Bench and lawyers then listened as Solicitor General Mehta read aloud a particularly complicated paragraph from the judgment to show how hard it was to comprehend.
The paragraph read:
“The effect of the necessity of existence of an ad idem arbitration clause, in the contract drawn amongst the contracting parties concerned, but is that, qua therebys but fortification becoming infused… Thus a force majeure statutory arbitration, therebys when it looses its functionality.”
After quoting it, Mehta simplified the message behind the judgment by saying:
“It says statutory arbitration is not permissible, only contractual… Section 3G is declared unconstitutional.”
The Bench smiled and acknowledged how confusing the text was.
Justice Surya Kant remarked “Thoda sa time lagega isko samajhne me (It will take some time to understand this).”
Mehta then requested the Court to stay the order. Interestingly, all other lawyers and parties also agreed with the request, which surprised the Bench. This collective agreement showed how universally difficult the judgment was to understand.
Further into the hearing, Mehta reminded the Court that this wasn’t the first time such an issue had occurred. He brought up a previous case from 2017, when Justice Thakur was serving in the Himachal Pradesh High Court.
Back then, the Supreme Court had remitted the case back to the same judge because the Bench simply couldn’t interpret what had been written.
Justice Dipankar Datta immediately recalled that instance and said:
“It is incomprehensible. That was the word used. Justice [Madan B] Lokur and Justice [Deepak] Gupta.”
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Ultimately, the Supreme Court stayed the operation of the March 20 judgment.
The Bench ordered “Meanwhile, the operation of the impugned judgment(s) shall remain stayed. Consequently, the pending proceedings under Section 3G(5) of the National Highways Act, 1956; Sections 34, 36 and 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 and the execution of arbitral awards shall continue in accordance with law.”
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