Supreme Court Summons Registry Officials After Matter Listed For Hearing Was Deleted

Today, the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Court Registry for deleting a matter. It has sought an explanation from the Secretary-General of the Supreme Court as to why the matter was deleted. 

A bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Rajesh Bindal was supposed to hear a service matter in Baidya Nath Choudhary v. Dr. Sree Surendra Kumar Singh (item no. 103) when the court was apprised that the matter was delisted.

On perusing why the matter was delisted, the Court immediately called for the Registry Officials to be summoned. A very visibly livid Justice Maheshwari questioned what right the Registry has in deleting a matter which is listed before the Court. 

Justice Maheshwari said: "I am fed up of this...We seek an explanation from the Secretary-General."

Although the Registry Officials tried to explain, the court simply did not entertain any explanation. 

The bench directed that it would hear the case and called for the parties to appear. While the petitioners informed the court that they were ready to argue, one of the respondents' counsel was not present in the court.

Advocate for one of the petitioners, Manish Kumar Saran informed the court: "I must say, we are ready. We have some problems because the State has communicated to me that they are not ready in view of this elimination."

Justice Maheshwari immediately ordered the arguing counsel to be present. 

Another advocate for the respondent requested: "I am requesting an adjournment. Your Lordship may have it next week."

But this displeased Justice Maheshwari more and he remarked: "Why? Why? It is a part-heard matter. Listed for hearing today. How can we adjourn for one week? A date was given by judicial order."

Justice Maheshwari further stated: "We are seeing, whenever this case is coming, we have passed orders. We know the [matter] will take some time. It will be dissolved once forever. Right or wrong. Let it go. Number of cases are pending for this reason."

Within minutes, the arguing counsel, Samir Ali Khan, for the respondent arrived and when the parties began to hear the matter, the court stopped them and continued to speak to the Registry Officials and the bench suddenly adjourned. 

Before adjourning, Justice Maheshwari said: "We are not going to adjourn this matter. We are going to hear it and decide this. Let it go for a day, two days or three days. We will continue."

The court reassembled after some time and continued to hear the matter. 

In this year itself, many instances have come to light where the Registry's failure to list the case has irked the Supreme Court. Yesterday, a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih sought an explanation from the Registry while a Special Leave Petition in a property-related matter was not listed despite the judicial orders explicitly stating that the matter is listed for August 27. 

A similar instance happened before a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Prashant Kumar Mishra, last week, which noticed a serious lapse in the case filed and warned the Registry of serious consequences if the same is repeated. On May 6, Justices Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol asked the Registrar to provide an explanation as to why an SLP was listed before the court without following due procedure. 

In January this year, a bench of Justices Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan expressed dismay as to why a civil appeal was directed to be listed on Thursday was instead listed on Friday. In the same month itself, Justices Aniruddha Bose and PV Sanjay Kumar reprimanded the Registry for not listing the Adani power matter despite the judicial orders. 

Last year in September, a bench of Justices Oka and Pankaj Mithal criticised the Registry for violating judicial orders of the court and termed it as a 'very sorry state of affairs'.