Supreme Court Disapproves Of Uttarakhand High Court Approach In Disposing Matters In Same Format

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Manoj Misra was hearing an appeal against an order passed by the Uttarakhand High Court refusing to quash a first information report. It was brought to the top court’s attention by the counsel for the appellants, Advocate Aadil Singh Boparai, that the judge had passed a ‘cryptic and cyclostyled order’ without considering the peculiar facts of the case, and as many as 44 identical orders in total had been passed by the single judge of the high court. The practice of the Uttarakhand High Court of passing ‘non-speaking’ orders without any application of mind had, on a previous occasion, already been deprecated by the top court, the counsel pointed out, relying on Harsh R. Kilachand v. State of Uttarkhand (2022), in which a bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and Hima Kohli had criticised such identical orders.

The bench led by Justice Kaul noted that the single judge had passed the cyclostyled orders without looking into the merits and only with a direction to the police to follow the guidelines laid down in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, (2014) 8 SCC 273 with respect to arresting an accused. After setting aside the order of the high court and quashing the FIR against the appellants on the ground that the necessary ingredients for the offences could not discerned “from a bare reading of the FIRs”, the bench further pronounced:

“We are, however, not inclined to rest the matter at that since one of the aspects urged was that what was observed [in the order] was that in the writ petition filed by the appellant(s) in the course of argument the only plea made was that the said petition be disposed of with a directions to the concerned station house officer to follow the judgment of this Court in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar reported as (2014) 8 SCC 273. We have noticed the contention of the appellant(s) that this is the nature of formatted order being passed by the judge and as an illustration has drawn our attention to one such order which had resulted in an order of this court. He states that six such orders came to light. It is now stated that there are 44 such orders passed. The aforesaid approach of the High Court only burdens this Court and we thus cannot commend on the manner of disposal of the petitions in this manner.”

Before concluding, the bench sounded a note of caution, saying, “We are thus of the view that the order should be placed before the Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court to ensure that such situations do not arise in future.”

This is not the first time that this practice of issuing identical orders without appreciating the merits of each case has come under the scanner. In June of last year, one of the 44 identical orders passed by the judge was challenged before the top court, which severely criticised the “manner in which the order was passed by the high court under Article 226 of the Constitution”. “While passing these orders, the judge has not taken pains to look into the merits of the matter and has passed cyclostyled orders,” the bench had noted, before restoring the writ petition on the file of the Uttarakhand High Court for it “to be heard on its own merits, in accordance with law” by another judge.