SC troubled by quality of judgments written by high courts

Source – tribuneindia.com

Quality of judgments written by high courts is troubling the Supreme Court. Days after it set aside a Himachal Pradesh High Court verdict for poor and incomprehensible English, the top court has remanded back a case to the Rajasthan High Court after it found that the verdict under challenge neither set out facts nor did it give any reasons for the conclusions reached.

A bench headed by Justice RK Agrawal was surprised to see that the high court’s judgment didn’t even record the submissions of the parties or examined the issues involved in the context of relevant legal provisions.

The bench was surprised to see that both the single bench and division bench of the Rajasthan High Court had dismissed the petition at the threshold without proper hearing.

“We cannot concur with the conclusions arrived at by the two courts below…,” the top court said remanding the case back to the single bench for fresh adjudication “on merits in accordance with law”.

“In our considered view, in order to appreciate the factual and legal controversy involved in the lis (litigation), the least which is expected of is that the order which decides the lis between the parties should contain the brief facts involved in the case, the grounds on which the action is impugned, the stand of the parties defending the action, the submissions of the parties in support of their stand, legal provisions, if any, applicable to the controversy involved in the lis, and lastly, the brief reasons as to why the case of one party deserves acceptance or rejection, as the case may be,” the bench said.

The case arose out of a petition filed by Municipal Board, Sumerpur, in 2004 against one Kundanmal challenging an order dated September 30, 2003 passed by the Collector of Pali.

The single bench dismissed the petition with the following order: “Heard learned counsel for the parties. The order impugned, Annex.8 has been passed in compliance of the order passed by Division Bench of this Court dated 15.1.2001 passed inter-parties being Annex.7. It is not shown, as to how the order, Annex.8 is not in accordance with the directions contained in Annex.7. In that view of the matter, I do not find any ground to interfere. The writ petition is, therefore, dismissed summarily.”

On an appeal filed against the single judge’s order, the division bench too passed a similar order without setting out facts or assigning any reasons for the conclusions reached. Have a look at the division bench order below.

“Having heard learned counsel for the appellant, we are of the opinion that no interference is called for in this appeal in the judgment of learned Single Judge who has rightly exercised his discretion in not interfering with the order passed by the Collector as the learned counsel has not been able to show how the impugned order is contrary to direction of Division Bench. In essence, the learned counsel for the appellant tried to urge that the decision rendered in Hotechad’s case in the light of which the Division Bench in his earlier decision has directed to decide his representation, was erroneous. That is not permissible.”

Senior advocate Vikas Singh said, “If you appoint poor quality judges, it is bound to reflect in the judgments they deliver. This also highlights the fact that the collegium is not doing its homework while recommending names for appointment as judges of high courts.”