Not just HCs, CJI nudges Supreme Court judges on delayed verdicts | India News

NEW DELHI: Amid the SC’s growing uneasiness over the unexpected delay in pronouncement of reserved judgments by judges, a two-judge bench of the apex court set Thursday as the day for reserved judgments a year and two months ago.The SC recently criticized High Court judges who reserve judgment and forget to pronounce their decisions, calling it an ailment in the judiciary. An SC bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Mishra on December 3, 2024 after hearing senior advocate AM Singhvi for the appellant and Additional Solicitor General N Venkatraman reserved the judgment in the case “B Prashant Hegde v State Bank of India and others”. The case centers around an alleged failure to pay bank dues of Rs 300 crore and a counterclaim challenging the IBC proceedings. It may be a coincidence that the case showed agitation only after an SC bench headed by CJI Surya Kant on February 3 criticized Jharkhand High Court judge Rangan Mukherjee for reserving judgment for years.Terming it a “challenge” and a “disorder in the justice delivery system”, the CJI said such delays must be “cured and not allowed to infect the system”.When contacted for a comment on his concern over the judgment being reserved for a long time, the CJI office said, “The CJI is aware of the issue and he is thinking of consulting his colleagues to issue a general internal guideline for speedy delivery of judgments. Majority of judges in the SC do not reserve judgments for a long time. SC judges must get some more time to think and think before giving a judgment as it has become the law of the land.”“On inquiry by the SC registry, TOI learned that Justice Mishra had agreed to write the judgment for the bench and it had been pending with him for over a year. CJI Kant had earlier said that the best way to avoid reservation of decision in many cases is to direct the orders in the court room as soon as both sides are heard in a case.The CJI, in most cases, gives judgment in the courtroom. Due to administrative workload that eats up its judicial time, the bench headed by the CJI sits outside the scheduled business hours to compensate the litigants and complete the day’s work, sources said.In 2001, the SC in the Anil Rai case flagged the practice of some High Court judges reserving judgments and then failing to pronounce them, or issuing only operative parts of the judgments with a promise to provide detailed reasons later – a promise that was often observed in violation.The SC ruled that if the judgment is reserved for more than six months, the litigants can apply to the chief justice concerned to list the case for a fresh hearing before another bench. The SC can lay down guidelines for the HC, but it has done little to address similar delays in the SC. Justice AS Oka, nearing his retirement last year, delivered the verdict in the long-standing dispute between the two ISKCON factions after reserving it for nearly a year.