Lawyers Routinely Giving Certificates For Filing Review Petitions Defeats Purpose Of Trusting Them With The Task: Delhi HC [Read Order]

The Delhi High Court, on Tuesday, rapped litigants for making it a habit of filing review petitions without understanding whether the case was fit for it.

"Some litigants, it appears, are never satisfied. This is being stated by this Court because filing of review petition has now become almost a habit with respect to certain litigants," Justice Valmiki J. Mehta observed.

The Court also scorned at the practice of lawyers routinely giving out certificates affirming that such review petitions should be filed, observing, "Not only filing of the review petition becoming a habit for certain litigants, the same is also not filed in terms of the rules of this Court, because a review petition must be accompanied by a certificate of the lawyer that the review petition is justified, however, lawyers are routinely giving certificate that the review petition should be filed. Giving of certificates by lawyers in a routine manner defeats the whole purpose of trusting the lawyers that they would only certify a case being fit for review only when it clearly falls within the scope of review jurisdiction."

It then went on to explain the difference between the two ways in which a judgment can be "wrong", explaining, "A judgment being ‘wrong’ has two connotations. One is ‘wrong’ for the purpose of review petition and another ‘wrong’ is that the judgment is wrong for the purpose of exercising appellate jurisdiction by the appellate court. What is within the realm of jurisdiction of an appellate court for holding the judgment to be wrong/illegal for being set aside is not within the scope of review petition and which lies only if there is some ex-facie and complete illegality in the impugned judgment i.e. an error apparent on the face of record."

The Court was hearing a review petition involving disciplinary proceedings initiated by the State Bank of India (SBI) against the Petitioner, Mr. K.M. Tomar. It noted that in the review petition filed by him, no ex-facie error has been pointed out and that he only wanted to reargue the writ petition on merits.

It, therefore, held the review petition to not be maintainable and dismissed it with costs of Rs. 20,000 to be paid to SBI within four weeks.