Judges reserving verdicts for years ‘an ailment’: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: A Jharkhand HC judge kept his verdict reserved in a writ petition for two years and orally pronounced it on Dec 4 after SC found the delay “shocking”, but even after two months, there is no sign of a written judgment, which has been neither uploaded to HC website nor made available to parties.

When senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi brought this to the notice of the court and said such incidents discredit the judicial system, a bench of CJI Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi admitted this is a problem with some HC judges, which needs urgent rectification. The CJI said, “It is an identified ailment of the justice delivery system. It must be cured and not allowed to infect the system.”

Litigant has right to know judgment on their plea: CJI
A litigant who approaches the court must get to know what judgment is given on his plea,” the CJI said. The same HC judge, Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay, was found to have kept several judgments pending for years, even in cases where the convicts had appealed against their capital and life sentences. The judge had delivered the verdicts in those cases only after SC took judicial notice of the same.

Amicus curiae Fauzia Shakeel said Rohatgi’s client can afford to approach SC for the inordinate delay in pronouncement of verdict and complain about subsequent non-availability of the written judgment. “But how many from the states and rural areas can afford to bear the cost of coming to Delhi and engaging a lawyer to apprise the court of such delays by HCs?” she asked. The CJI candidly said certain HC judges have devised innovations to step around the timeline fixed for pronouncement of judgments by reserving their verdicts and listing such cases again, purportedly to seek certain clarifications.

When Rohatgi said that SC must administratively ask the chief justices of HCs to monitor whether reserved verdicts are pronounced within three months, CJI said a conference of HC chief justices is being organised on Feb 7 where he would raise this issue along with those pertaining to other reforms in judiciary he has proposed.

The bench asked the Jharkhand HC judge to make available the written judgment within two weeks by uploading it to the HC website and directed the Registry to provide its certified copies to the parties. The CJI said, “Judges should not reserve decisions in a large number of cases when it is beyond them to pen judgments expeditiously. They must use the vacations to complete their pending work.”

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