Alterations can't be made in judgements after pronouncement: Madras High Court

The Madras High Court has ruled that judges are not entitled to make alterations in their judgements after signing and pronouncing it and "any addition, deletion or modification of the contents of a judgement" will tantamount to its alteration. A division bench comprising justices V Ramasubramanian and VM Velumani gave the ruling on a writ appeal filed by former DMK minister N Suresh Rajan, who had challenged administrative instruction issued by the high court's Registrar to speed up framing of charges in a disproportionate assets case against him.

The instruction was issued on the basis of "docket orders" passed by a single judge after disposing of Rajan's criminal revision petition in open court on July 10, 2013. Rajan had pleaded against interim attachment of his properties. "Every word, every letter and every punctuation mark in a judgement is of significance. In the Tamil epic Silapathikaram, the legendary Pandia king committed phonetical mistake, resulting in the execution of Kovalan," the court pointed out.

"An alteration may be a material alteration or an immaterial alteration or insignificant alteration. But nevertheless, an alteration in relation to a judgement is always significant," the bench held. "The very fact that the insignificant and immaterial changes are expressly allowed by law to be carried out would show that the general rule is that every material or immaterial change will tantamount to alteration of a judgement.Therefore, even an addition to a judgement would tantamount to alteration."

The bench said, "Directions issued on the administrative side in a manner that is likely to instill any psychosis, fear or otherwise, on the part of the trial Judge or administrative directions that may give room for an impression that the High Court is monitoring the progress of the case, cannot be issued behind the back of the parties."