Supreme Court's Message To The Bar: "Upto Us To Allow Adjournment; You Come Prepared"

The Supreme Court has cautioned the Bar that it is upto the bench to allow a request for adjournment even after a letter has been circulated seeking the same.

A bench of Justices A Amanullah and Sheel Nagu today told a counsel before it seeking an adjournment, "It is upto us to allow adjournment or not..You have to come prepared..this is a message to the bar..we will take this up end of the board.."

When the counsel pressed for the relief saying, "If it can be any other day..", Justice Amanullah responded saying, "Today is also a day..".

The bench went on to finally grant the request for adjournment and directed that the case be listed next week.

Recently, the Supreme Court had witnessed a candid courtroom exchange after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) sought an adjournment in the matter involving Congress leader Chaitanya Baghel. Responding to the request for adjournment, CJI Surya Kant made a pointed observation on the functioning of the Court during the ongoing partial working days. "That is the beauty of our partial working days. First, it's 'list it, list it'; then comes the adjournment. We read files overnight for these cases," the Chief Justice remarked.

The observation came amid repeated discussions in recent weeks on the Supreme Court's partial working days, with the Bench highlighting the workload handled by judges even during periods commonly referred to as court vacations. It is to be noted that on June 15, the CJI had remarked, "Before vacations, everyone says ‘list it during vacation’. Once it’s listed, nobody appears. And if we say anything, they complain that the Court is making comments.”

In March, the Chief Justice of India issued certain procedure / modalities to be followed for circulation of letters seeking adjournment of cases. Notably, no Letters seeking for adjournment of regular cases listed before the Courts is permitted. For fresh and after notice matters, it has been ordered that adjournment of the case will be considered only under exceptional circumstances i.e., bereavement in the family or medical / health condition of the Advocate / Party in-person or such other genuine reason to the satisfaction of the Court.

Furthermore, the circular said specific reason for seeking adjournment and number of adjournments already sought in the case shall be mentioned in the letters seeking adjournment.