Ingenuity causes judicial derailment

Ingenuity is also a part of advocacy. It has been in vogue for decades and the effect is that 3 crore cases await disposal.

In a strange case, a tenant didn’t challenge an order passed by a tribunal against him. The beneficiary moved court seeking possession of the premises and won. The loser woke after at least a decade. He challenged execution of the decree, saying the court concerned had no power to issue it. The high court agreed with him and a stay was granted.

The tenant was all smiles and the decree-holder had to rush to Delhi and file an appeal before the Supreme Court (SC), which detected the mischievous ingenuity and used the extraordinary power under article 142 of the constitution to make the decree absolute.

“It is because of these hyper-technicalities that the judiciary in India is getting a bad name. All sorts of objections are raised to delay matters as much as possible,” a bench of justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra observed.

“There is a first innings in which a dispute often comes to this court to secure a final order. Then, the second innings starts to avoid execution of the decree,” SC said, exposing the modus operandi.

People are “fed up” and are not going to “tolerate” such delaying tactics to subvert operation of judicial orders, it warned.

But the pound-foolish government seems to have little concern for the health of the judiciary. The number of cases as well as judicial vacancies are mounting, so is unrest among people against delayed justice. The system needs financial help to come on track.