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The Allahabad High Court in an order dated 26^th June, 2021 introduced an "odd-even" rule for listing cases at the Benches of the High Court (Allahabad & Lucknow). The order was issued by newly appointed Acting Chief Justice, Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari

The rules pertain to necessary directions for placement of cases in view of Constitution of Benches/Constitution of Special Benches at High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, Lucknow Bench, Lucknow, w.e.f. 28th of June, 2021.

The rules are as under -

1. The Single Bench cases shall be placed in accordance with the Case number of a Case type being an EVEN case number or ODD case number sequentially and distributed evenly from the oldest unless ordered otherwise. The order in this regard shall be passed from time to time by Chief Justice/Acting Chief Justice/Senior Judge.

2. There shall be ordinarily a limit of 40 cases in the Additional Cause List for a Single Bench and 30 cases in the Additional Cause List for a Division Bench, unless otherwise directed.

3. The Lists of cases for Single Bench shall be prepared as per criteria of ODD/EVEN in point no.1 (except Part Heard and Tied Up matters and except matters mentioned in point no.5), whereas the Lists of cases for Division Bench shall be prepared as per the jurisdiction.

4. The Single Benches to which any Jurisdiction of case types are specially assigned, the priority shall be given to the listing of such specially assigned case types, and thereafter, if space permits, the other type of cases shall be included as per point no.1 and point no.2.

5. The Single Bench cases in which order have been passed by a Bench for listing including date-fix which falls within next Seven (7) days from the date of passing of such order, the same shall be listed in the same Bench which passed such order. In case of unavailability of the same Bench, the cases shall be listed as per criteria of ODD/EVEN in point no.1 and point no.2.

6. The Single Bench cases which are connected shall be listed according to leading case number being EVEN or ODD, unless ordered otherwise. The leading case in a connected matter shall be the case which contains the most recent order among all the connected cases. If there are more than one case in the connected cases having most recent order of the same date, then the leading case shall be the case having most recent case number.

7. The Division Bench cases which are connected shall be listed as per the administrative order dated 05.12.2018 of Hon’ble Chief Justice.

8. The List of Applications (including urgency application of registered cases) of Single Benches shall be prepared as per criteria of ODD/EVEN in point no.1 considering case number for the ODD/EVEN criteria, except Part Heard and Tied Up matters and except matters mentioned in point no.5.

9. Urgency application of unregistered Single Bench cases shall be placed before the Senior most Single Bench sitting for the day. The cases thereafter shall be listed as per orders of the Bench in accordance with the criterion of point no.1 considering case number for the ODD/EVEN criteria.

10. Urgency application of unregistered Division Bench cases shall be placed before the Division Bench having the jurisdiction of the matter.