An advocates’ association in Madhya Pradesh on Monday challenged the legality of three orders issued by the Madhya Pradesh High Court on its administrative side, asking all District and Sessions courts to dispose of 25 of their oldest cases every quarter.
Advocates across Madhya Pradesh had abstained from court work for three days last week in protest against this scheme, arguing it was unreasonable to expect such a clearance rate under the current judicial process.
After two days of striking, a Bench comprising the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh HC on March 24 ordered all advocates to return to court and threatened them with contempt and debarment if the orders were not followed. In response, the State Bar Council chief Prem Singh Bhadouria had appealed to lawyers to continue the strike without being afraid of “threats from any court”.
On Monday, the Other Backward Classes (OBC) Advocates Welfare Association approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court with a writ petition challenging the orders issued by the High Court to clear old pending cases.
The three orders that have been challenged essentially direct all Principal District and Sessions Judges in the State to dispose of 25 of their oldest cases every three months to clear pendency. The cases not disposed of are supposed to be carried over to the next quarter for disposal.
The petition challenging these orders questioned under which provision of law they had been issued.
The petition added that the direction were “illegal and unconstitutional”, saying, “If the Principal District & Sessions Judges are compelled to achieve their target of 25 oldest cases in a hot haste, in that event, they will not be in a position to pass their Judgments in a fair and transparent manner…”
Supporting this, the petitioners cited several Supreme Court rulings that held that the idea of a speedy trial is relative and that a speedy trial may not always result in the most fair and reasoned judgments.
It added that there will also not be enough time to cross examine witnesses and other legal proceedings in the course of a trial, “which will be detrimental to the interest of litigants covered under Article 21 of the Constitution of India”.
The petition, filed through Advocate Rameshwar Singh Thakur, thus prayed for the challenged orders to be set aside and directions for the respondent to issue orders only after preparing a list of “unnecessarily pending” criminal cases in the lower courts, in the interest of justice.
The petitioners also sought that the orders be stayed until this petition was decided.
