April,4,2016:

Supreme Court Judgment of 2001, mandates that Judges of the High Courts cannot reserve their Judgments for more than three months.

Justice delayed is justice denied. But what do you call it when a judge has written a judgment but won't deliver it? The longest pending judgment is in Calcutta HC which had been reserved for more than seven years, till October 2013. The government is not yet aware if the particular judgment has been finally delivered.

Add an average pendency of cases of 835 days in the Calcutta HC to the longest reserved judgment, and the time it takes for the verdict to come may exceed 10 years.

The situation is just marginally better in other high courts. HCs have furnished status of pending judgments only up to October 31, 2013.

Most of the HCs have refused to share with the Centre information on pending judgments in their jurisdiction.

After repeated queries were made to fulfill a parliamentary obligation, the law ministry has received information on the date of longest pending judgments from 21 HCs, but nothing on total number of reserved judgments.

The central government had in 2001 given an assurance to Parliament that it would gather all information on reserved and pending judgments in all HCs. Repeated queries to the registrar of HCs failed to draw complete information. All that the 21 HCs provided was on the longest pending judgment in their court.

Law minister Sadananda Gowda may take up the issue with the chief justices of the HCs on making all such information public, given the assurance the government has given to Parliament.

The ministry has also received several complaints against some of the judges of the HCs who have often resorted to reserving their judgments for periods more than six months.

According to a Supreme Court judgment of 2001, judges of the high courts cannot reserve their judgments for more than three months. In cases where it exceeds this period, a petitioner is free to appeal seeking transfer of the case before a new bench.

At least seven HCs have reported no pendency of judgment, till 2013. The seven better performing HCs are Madhya Pradesh, Madras, Orissa, Gauhati, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Sikkim.

A separate study conducted by Daksh, a Bengaluru-based NGO researching on judicial performances, has found that it takes more than three years on average before a case is disposed of in the high courts.

The plight of a litigant worsens when a judge retires before delivering a judgment.The case has to be heard afresh before a new judge.

It's not just the judges of the high courts to be blamed for delayed delivery of judgments. In some of the politically-sensitive cases in recent past even some of the senior judges of the Supreme Court have reserved judgments for two years and more. TNN

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