'Must Be Cured' : CJI Surya Kant On Delay In Pronouncing Judgments, To Raise Issue At High Court Chief Justices' Conference

The Chief Justice of India on Tuesday repeated his concerns about the delay on the part of certain High Court Judges in delivering judgments after reserving them for several months.

CJI Surya Kant said that he will address the issue in the upcoming conference of High Court Chief Justices scheduled to take place on February 7-8. "This is also one of the agenda which we have already flagged and would like to discuss," CJI Surya Kant said.

The bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi was hearing a writ petition filed by four convicts aggrieved by the delay on the part of the Jharkhand High Court in delivering verdict in their appeals for over three years. Earlier, after the Court's intervention, the High Court delivered the judgments. The Court also had expanded the scope of the case to address the issue across all High Courts, and had called for reports from all High Courts regarding pending judgments. In a hearing held in last November, the Court had proposed that the High Courts publish the information regarding the number of judgments reserved.

Today, Advocate on Record Fauzia Shakil, the amicus curiae in the matter,  placed on record the compiled reports from all the High Courts. 

Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing in a connected matter, informed the Court that the High Court judge pronounced the decision on December 4 only orally, and until now, the judgment has not been uploaded on the website. 

"The Chief Justice should look into this; it is demeaning for the court to do this....some message has to go. What do we tell the client? This type of litigation does not add to the dignity of the institution," he said 

The CJI replied that presently the justice delivery mechanism is equipped with two kinds of judges.

"There are two types of judges, one type - very hardworking judges, if you go to their courts, they will hear you argue, by the time they get get they will reserve 10-12 matters and eventually if you keep on hearing 7-10 matters, you know your capacity to write ....but there are judges, unfortunately, they do not deliver the judgments -that also create the prpblems. So this is a challenge before the system, we are not speaking against any individual ....but this is an identifiable setback of the justice delivery system, it must be cured, it must be cured very effectively. It requires serious cooperation, which must be done." 

When Rohatgi said that the bench must issue some directions to set timelimit for the delivery of judgments, Justice Bagchi said that such directions are already there in many previous judgments.

At this juncture, the CJI flagged another emerging trend - the High Court Judges, after completing the hearing, instead of reserving the judgment, will list the matter in the main causelist and keep on adjourning it. This is a method designed to circumvent the Supreme Court's directions to not delay the delivery of judgments in reserved matters.

The CJI asked the counsels to consider for solution in the following instances : (1) where the matter was adjourned for directions, but practically ripe for main arguments and could have been heard and reserved; (2) the need for a mandatory readiness of the judgement for the benefit of the lawyers at the time of the pronouncement, except where the judge only pronounces the operative order because of some 'unique urgency'. 

On the second aspect, the CJI clarified 'unique urgency' could be cases of demolition, bail etc, however, here too, the judgments should be available within a period of 2 months.

Last year, in Ratilal Jhaverbhai Parmar and Ors. v. State of Gujarat and Ors, the Supreme Court held that reasoned judgment must be given within 2-5 days of pronouncing the operative portion. In Ravindra Pratap Shahi v. State of UP, it was held that the Registrar must place the matter before the High Court Chief Justice if the judgment is not pronounced within three months from the date of reserving the verdict. In Rajan v State of Haryana as well, the Court urged the High Courts to not delay the uploading of the judgments.

The matter will now be heard on February 16. 

Case Details : PILA PAHAN@ PEELA PAHAN vs. THE STATE OF JHARKHAND| W.P.(Crl.) No. 000169 / 2025