'Unnecessary Breaks By HC Judges': Supreme Court Says It's High Time For A Performance Audit

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that there are some judges, who work very hard, while a few others unnecessarily take coffee breaks or other kinds of breaks. Citing that there are complaints galore against the high court judges, the apex court called for their performance audits.

The matter came up before a bench comprising justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh. The bench was hearing a plea of four persons, who claimed that the Jharkhand High Court reserved its order on the criminal appeal against conviction and life sentence in 2022, but did not pronounce the judgment.

During the hearing, Justice Kant said, "There are some judges who work very hard but at the same time there are judges who are unnecessarily taking coffee breaks; this break or that break. What is for lunch hour? We are hearing a lot of complaints about the high court judges."

The bench said time has come to assess the expenditure on the judges vis-a-vis their output. "This is a larger issue which needs to be looked into. What is the performance of the high court judges? How much are we spending and what is the output? It's high time we do a performance audit," said Justice Kant.

Advocate Fauzia Shakil, appearing for the appellants, contended that after a nudge from the apex court, the high court on May 5 and 6 pronounced the verdicts in their cases. Shakil informed the bench that three of the four were acquitted while the remaining resulted in a split verdict and the matter was referred to the high court chief justice and he was granted bail.

The bench was informed that the acquitted three persons were not released from jail and also the high court did not mention the date of reserving the orders in the judgment.

Later, the state government counsel informed the bench that the convicts were released and their release was delayed due to the non-availability of release orders from the trial courts.

Justice Kant said hopefully in this case, the court will be "frank and blunt" to deal with the issue of the output of judges as it is connected with personal liberty.

Petitioners Pila Pahan, Soma Badang, Satyanarayan Sahu were convicted of murder and other charges by the trial court and later acquitted by the high court. In the case of Dharmeshwar Oraon, he was convicted for the offence of rape, in which there was a split verdict but he was released on bail.

The bench tagged the plea with a similar case related to Allahabad high court where information was sought on the date of pronouncement of the judgment and the date when the judgment was uploaded.

The bench said it seems that the issue would require a deeper analysis and mandatory guidelines by this court, so that convicts or undertrials aren't compelled to lose the trust and faith in the justice delivery system. The bench has asked the registry to collate data from high courts and scheduled the matter for further hearing in July.