Adjournment-culture in courts must be curbed

Parties seeking adjournments should be made to pay some reasonable but fixed cost which should go to the exchequer rather than opposite side or its counsel. Even judges should normally not have discretionary power to deviate from such fixed cost.

JUSTICE S N Dhingra of Delhi High Court has rightly lashed out at frivolous reasons usually given to seek adjournments just to deliberately delay court-proceedings. A division-bench of Supreme Court had also opined against frequent stay-orders granted by courts that too at a time when parties obtaining stay-orders many-a-times ultimately lose the cases under stay.

Parties seeking adjournments should be made to pay some reasonable but fixed cost which should go to the exchequer rather than opposite side or its counsel. Even judges should normally not have discretionary power to deviate from such fixed cost.

Justice SN Dhingra’s strictures and dismissal of request for adjournment is in tune with the vision-document presented by Union Law Minister at New Delhi conference on October 24, 2009, with some practical solutions to check unholy adjournment-culture in courts.

But all this is not enough. Rather government-departments/ministries are amongst prominent names in seeking adjournments. Department of Justice sought such an ex-party stay-order against verdict from Central Information Commission (CIC) about three years ago, but since then the case has not moved even an inch with counsels for the public-authority seeking adjournments again and again! Even a meeting of all the information commissioners at CIC had to decide that Chief Information Commissioner would meet Chief Justice of Delhi so that cases against CIC verdicts could be decided fast to maintain spirit of Right To Information Act for providing timely information.

Since a large number of cases involve government functionaries, the court/bench handling such cases should devise a mechanism whereby fixed days are devoted for such particular government functionaries which are most involved in court-cases. For example, all cases involving Central Information Commission may be taken on a particular day of the month and likewise. It should be ensured that counsels of government functionaries may be present on priority on such suggested fixed days.