Come what may, lawyers engaged by clients must be present in court sharp at 10:30am and refrain from making lame excuses to seek adjournments, the court said.
Come what may, lawyers engaged by clients must be present in court sharp at 10:30am and refrain from making excuses to seek adjournments, an anguished Supreme Court said on Wednesday.
The stern warning comes as music to the ears of thousands of harassed litigants across the country who travel long distances for hearings that are invariably deferred.
Asking lawyers to stop making flimsy excuses, the court thundered: "What traffic jams? Let there be rain, sunshine, or even an earthquake. You are supposed to be in the court by 10:30am. You cannot seek adjournments."
A bench of justice Markandey Katju and justice VS Sirpurkar castigated the lawyers who undoubtedly face traffic problems owing to the continuing road, bridge, and BRTS work in the city.
"This is not a high school where the student comes before the headmaster with a lame excuse that he is late because his cycle got punctured," the judges said. "When you know there is a traffic jam in Delhi why don' t you start early? Even we judges do it," the bench said.
The judges expressed their anguish when a junior counsel in a criminal case sought adjournment on the ground that his senior could not make it to the court on time as he was caught in a "traffic jam".
The bench dismissed the case for "default" as the senior lawyer failed to appear even after the matter was called for adjudication for the third time.
Another junior advocate faced the bench's ire after she failed to give proper replies to the court on a matter relating to a service dispute.
"If you have not read the (case) file, don' t appear before us," the bench told the lawyer curtly. "Stop appearing in the Supreme Court from tomorrow if you don' t read the files."
The judiciary is facing a consolidated backlog of three crore cases and there have been growing demands for the appointment of more judges and filling up of vacant judicial posts in the subordinate courts, the high courts, and the Supreme Court.
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