SC sick of delayed justice, cracks the whip on endless adjournments

They ranged from Gayathri's advocate being sick, to the need to attend a relative's wedding ceremony.

Girish - a 70-year old man - the respondent in the case, used to turn up in court on every occasion, but had to leave empty-handed because Gayathri left no stone unturned to ensure that the cross-examination - an essential element of a case, could not be conducted.

The apex court based its ruling on the precedence laid down in its own decision in the KK Velusamy case of 2011, and Order 18 Rule 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure 1973.

The court followed paragraphs 9, 10, 19 and 21 of the Velusamy ruling, which, taken cumulatively, stated that the more the number of times a party to a case filed applications to delay the collection of evidence (and collection of evidence cannot be done without cross-examination), and the more the number of adjournments it sought to delay the same, the higher should be the quantum of costs imposed.

Excessive leeway

For quite a long time, especially in civil cases, Indian lawyers have made a killing out of adjournments. They get their fees, while the clients they are representing get to buy time, which suits them. And all this while litigants on the opposite side keep waiting for justice endlessly.

The spate of adjournments (postponing) of cases has always been blamed for the mammoth number of pending cases the Indian judiciary is struggling under.

A study by Daksh - a legal policy and research think-tank based out of India - showed how 0.5% of the country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is squandered because of the sheer delay in disposal of cases.

And, at a talk delivered in Delhi in April this year, Dr Aparna Chandra, professor of criminal jurisprudence at the National Law University, Delhi, outlined how the procedural laws - both civil and criminal, give excessive leeway to litigants to delay cases.

While in criminal cases, the deliberate delays of the prosecution tend to endanger the lives of those who are lodged in prisons or lockups of police stations, in civil cases, the situation is different - people seek adjournments mainly to evade accountability or secure financial gain, Chandra stated.

Law Commission recommendations

In 2009, the Law Commission of India came out with its 229^th report, which dealt with how to reduce the huge pileup of pending cases. Foremost among the Commission's recommendations was that the procedural laws - the Code of Civil Procedure and Code of Criminal Procedure - should be appropriately overhauled, so as to make the seeking of adjournments on frivolous grounds impermissible in law. Second, it called for a change in judicial attitudes to granting adjournments.

As the Supreme Court noted in the present case, because of the liberal granting of adjournments by the trial court, both the proceedings and time "got arrested". And, as the old adage goes, justice delayed is justice denied.

Perhaps, the imposition of costs in this case (because Supreme Court rulings serve as precedents, and form a part of the law of the land according to Article 141 of the Constitution of India) could dissuade people from trying to bring the wheels of justice to a grinding halt.

Edited by Shreyas Sharma

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