Supreme Court Deprecates Practice Of Pronouncing Final Orders Without Reasoned Judgments

The Supreme Court has again deprecated the practice of pronouncing the final orders without reasoned judgments.

If a judgment cannot be delivered on the same date or immediately thereafter, logically the judgment ought to have been at least reserved to facilitate the Judge to pen down the order, the bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said while setting aside an unreasoned order passed by Delhi High Court.

In this case, the appellants had submitted before the Apex Court that the High Court judge only dictated the operative part and the reasoned judgment was not available even after 9 months. The court, therefore called for a report from the high court. In the report, the delay was attributed to some personal difficulty of the Judge for some period of time. 

We appreciate that the learned Judge may have delivered a number of judgments and dealt with many cases and in the interregnum period may have even faced some personal difficulty as set out in the report but that does not take away from the fact that the process which was required to be followed as set out in the judicial pronouncements has not been followed in the present case, the bench also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy said.

Referring to a recent order in Balaji Baliram Mupade vs. State of Maharashra, the bench observed: 

We had emphasized that judicial discipline requires promptness in delivery of judgments, an aspect repeatedly emphasized by this Court when this problem gets compounded where the result may be known but not the reasons depriving the aggrieved party of opportunity to seek further judicial redressal. We have also referred to the Constitution Bench judgment of this Court delivered as far back as in 1983 in State of Punjab & Ors. vs. Jagdev singh Talwandi (1984) 1 SCC 596, which drew the attention of the High Court to serious difficulties caused on account of practice which was being 3 increasingly adopted by several High Courts of pronouncing the final orders without reasoned judgments. We have also referred to the subsequent judgments even delivered by this Court in our aforesaid judgment but there is no purpose in repeating the same

The court observed that the result of not following the process is that the appellant being the aggrieved party, is unable to avail of the legal remedy. Therefore, the court set aside the impugned order and remitted the matter back for reconsideration of the High Court on merits.

CASE: ORIENTAL INSURANCE CO. LTD. vs. ZAIXHU XIE [SLP(C) Diary No(s). 21991/2020]

CORAM: Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy

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