CJI D Y Chandrachud & his colleague judges in the Apex Court appeared to be sending out a loud message to lawyers & litigants on the first day of business after summer vacation - do not rush to the Supreme Court for anything & everything, especially disputes involving very small amounts.

One of the first cases to be dismissed by a bench led by the CJI was for the reason that it involved a dispute over an amount of a few lakh. & the judges appeared to apply this rule uniformly irrespective of whether a junior or a senior advocate, renowned or not, appeared for the litigant.

The Supreme Court benches also seem to be following a pattern in refusing to condone major delays in filing of appeals & dismissing these for laxity on the part of the lawyer, or litigant, in registering their petition within the statutory period of limitation. This means, the Supreme Court has decided that unless the litigant or his/her advocate satisfactorily explained the extraordinary grounds justifying the delay in filing of the appeals, these would not be entertained. This would hurt the government, the biggest litigant, the most as many of its appeals are accompanied by application for condonation of delay.

The Courts also dismissed most appeals against judgments where there was concurrence of trial court & the HC decisions. With nearly 70,000 cases pending adjudication, majority of which is less than 5-year-old, the CJI & his colleagues appeared to have devised a method not to slow down justice delivery by entertaining those writ petitions which are filed directly in the SC even though the concerned HCs or statutorily designated forums would be better placed to deal with the issues raised.

A Public Interest Litigation seeking directions to all state governments for the construction of sewage treatment plants to keep the rivers clean came up before the CJI-led bench on Monday. CJI Chandrachud's reaction was: "We can't monitor construction of STPs across the country. The designated forum is the National Green Tribunal. You must file an appropriate petition before the NGT."

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the LatestLaws staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Source Link

Picture Source :