Busier Mondays, Fridays for Supreme Court judges | India News

NEW DELHI: On his first day in court on Monday, Chief Justice U U Lalit has scheduled an impressive show by listing over 900 petitions before 15 two-judge benches, including 60 PILs, along with pleas of some Muslim women challenging Karnataka’s hijab ban in educational institutions and some others seeking ban on all forms of unilateral divorces among Muslims.
As the master of roster, the CJI has assigned about 60 cases to each of these benches, which will get a maximum of 270 minutes of official business hours from 10.30am to 4pm, to deal with the petitions. This means, on an average a case would get a little over four minutes, during which the petitioner’s counsel has to convince judges why they should entertain the plea, seek response from the opposite side and also grant interim relief. Justice M R Shah-led bench is assigned the highest 65 petitions.

Among other cases, the CJI-led bench would also hear pleas by Gautam Navlakha against NIA and Siddique Kappan against the UP government. Justice Hemant Gupta-led bench would hear the challenge to hijab ban, while Justice Sanjay K Kaul-led bench would take up the plea for ban on all unilateral divorce customs among Muslims.
With ex-CJI N V Ramana on his last working day admitting he had not been able to give enough attention to prompt listing of cases, new CJI Lalitwithin hours of taking oath, met all the other 29 judges of the SC and chalked out an action plan for the next two months on the listing front.
He informed the judges as many as 970 cases, many filed months ago, had not seen the light of the day and he wished to list them as early as possible. With the judges in agreement, the average number of cases listed before a bench was increased by 15 on Monday to accommodate over 200 such never-listed cases. The same process could be repeated on Friday, SC sources said.
The usual short working hours for judges on Mondays and Fridays, when most benches completed their day’s work by lunch time, would be a thing of the past under the new system envisioned by CJI Lalit. He and senior judges of the SC are on the same page that old matters should be taken up by benches on Mondays and Fridays after completing hearing of fresh matters.
The meeting of judges also decided that 28,000-odd petitions, in which notices have been issued but have not been listed for a long time, would be taken up for hearing on priority on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It was also decided to focus on completing adjudication in pending death penalty matters and cases referred to larger benches.
“The CJI and the judges agreed to implement the new system of listing and stretching of the working hours on Mondays and Fridays for a month and then fine tune it if necessary,” the sources said.
On Monday, of the 900-odd petitions listed before the 15 two-judge benches, nearly 60 PILs are evenly distributed among all 15 courts. Among them is one by serial PIL litigator M L Sharma, listed before the CJI-led bench, against PM Narendra Modi.