High courts must pronounce judgment within 3 months of reserving verdict: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: In a bid to curb the "reserve and forget" habit among some high court judges, Supreme Court on Friday mandated a three month deadline for HCs to pronounce their verdicts, while also laying down that orders in bail cases must be passed immediately.

After coming across a series of appeals against convictions in criminal cases languishing indefinitely, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said HCs must display extra promptitude in deciding matters concerning personal liberty, regular and anticipatory bail.

CJI Kant said, "Bail applications should be heard, and the order should preferably be pronounced and uploaded the same day. If it is reserved, it should be pronounced the next day and uploaded to the website."

Mere prompt pronouncement of the order granting bail would no longer be sufficient as SC mandated that it must also be communicated to the jail authorities with equal promptness to ensure that the undertrial/convict is released from custody immediately, preferably the same day or certainly by the next day, unless s/he was required to be kept behind bars in other cases or for failure to furnish the bail bonds.

SC asked the trial courts concerned to report compliance of the bail order to their high courts.

However, SC gave some leeway to HCs and said if a bench was of the opinion that delivering a reasoned judgment would take time in cases where an order was required urgently, it could pronounce the operative part immediately and follow it up in the next 15 days. However, it said HCs must upload all verdicts within 24 hours of pronouncement.

CJI Kant and Justice Bagchi said the HC registry must give a monthly report on the number of judgments reserved to the chief justice, who could confidentially notify the judges concerned about cases in which judgments had been reserved for two months.

If the judge or bench concerned failed to pronounce the verdict in three months, the HC CJ would request them to do so in the next two weeks, failing which the case could be assigned to another judge/bench for a fresh hearing and a prompt decision, SC said, while accepting or modulating many of the suggestions given by amicus curiae Fauzia Shakil.

Apart from the steps to be taken by the CJ, SC gave liberty to the parties in such situations to file applications to assign their cases to another bench. It said every judgment must mention the date on which the verdict was reserved.