SUPREME COURT URGES JHARKHAND HIGH COURT JUDGES TO TAKE LEAVE FOR WRITING PENDING JUDGMENTS:

The Supreme Court has taken serious note of the prolonged delays in the pronouncement of judgments by the Jharkhand High Court, urging its judges to take leave if necessary to clear the mounting backlog. This observation came while a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi was hearing six petitions concerning the recruitment of home guards in the state.

The petitions arose from a recruitment process held in 2017, in which the petitioners were declared successful candidates. Despite their selection, no appointments were made. Seeking relief, the petitioners approached the Jharkhand High Court. In 2023, the High Court reserved orders on their cases, but even after a lapse of two years, the judgments were not delivered.

When the matter came before the Supreme Court on August 8, it was informed that the orders in the petitioners’ cases had finally been released. However, upon reviewing a sealed-cover report submitted by the High Court, the bench noted that judgments in 61 other cases were still pending pronouncement.

The Court emphasised that the High Court must take urgent measures to release “reasoned” orders in these pending matters. The bench indicated that while legal reasoning was important, judges should focus on disposing of cases promptly rather than engaging in unnecessarily elaborate jurisprudential discussions that could further delay justice. It suggested that if required, judges should even take leave from their regular duties to dedicate time exclusively to writing and finalising pending judgments.

The matter was scheduled to be taken up again in November, with the Supreme Court expecting concrete progress on reducing the pendency of reserved judgments.

The issue is not isolated to the present case. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had been seized of two other matters in which delays in pronouncing reserved judgments in criminal cases by the Jharkhand High Court were brought to its attention. In April, a bench headed by Justice Kant directed the Registrar General of the Jharkhand High Court to submit a status report in a sealed cover detailing the number of reserved judgments in criminal matters. Subsequently, the Court expanded the scope of this report to include all categories of cases, criminal as well as civil and extended the requirement to all High Courts across the country.

This scrutiny has already led to some progress. Following the Supreme Court’s intervention, certain pending judgments have been released by the Jharkhand High Court. Nonetheless, the sealed-cover report in the present matter revealed that a significant number of cases remain unresolved, underscoring the scale of the backlog problem.

The bench reiterated that prolonged delays in pronouncing judgments undermine public confidence in the justice delivery system and adversely affect litigants, particularly in cases where personal rights and livelihoods are at stake. In situations such as the home guard recruitment dispute, delays directly impact individuals’ employment prospects, causing prolonged uncertainty and hardship.

By calling for immediate steps to address the situation, including the extraordinary measure of judges taking leave to focus solely on writing judgments, the Supreme Court has signalled that it expects tangible improvements in the Jharkhand High Court’s disposal rate in the coming months.