On the Supreme Court’s 75th Foundation Day, the Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud remarked that he was ready to “begin difficult conversations” over the length of oral arguments by lawyers, which is considered one of the significant contributors to judicial delays.
“We have to ensure that the length of oral arguments does not interminably delay judicial outcomes,” said the CJI, but legal experts argued that limiting the length of oral arguments would be a difficult task — one that would would entail a major overhaul of the system.
Speaking to The Hindu, senior advocate and constitutional expert Sanjay Hegde said that reducing the length of oral argument time would also involve curtailing the rights of individual parties to be heard.
“Principles would have to be laid down to ensure that only one case would be treated as the lead case, and that everybody would be free to put in written submissions. Then, only one set of lawyers would be heard for a fixed length of time,” Mr. Hegde said.
“The rules for determining even this have not been laid down. For instance, you had the challenge to Article 370. A lot of people who were affected filed a plea. Now, who would decide which of those people would be heard?” the senior advocate said, adding that until there are constitutional principles limiting access to the court, it may not be possible to restrict oral arguments.
“Access to court time is almost taken for granted. If one starts restricting access to court time at the higher courts, it would apply equally to lower courts. Only if we move to a system where even in the lower courts, court time is restricted and a lot of procedures are done out of court, including taking depositions, would the system apply upwards,” Mr. Hegde opined.
‘Leave it to the Judge’
In 1984, the Law Commission in its 99th report had considered this very problem, and had come to conclusion that it was “not inclined to suggest any rigid or mathematically precise time limits for oral arguments”.
“It may be difficult to lay down any hard and fast rule for determining the minimum time for oral arguments in all cases. However, it should still be possible for the court to obtain, from counsel appearing on both the sides, an estimate of the time that may be reasonably required for oral arguments and to request counsel to adhere to that time,” the Commission had stated.
“The matter may be left to the good sense of the Judge who can, after consulting counsel, fix the time beforehand, keeping in mind the nature of the case and the issues to be argued,” the Commission had further suggested.
A 2018 Department of Justice research, titled ‘The Anatomy of Judicial Pendency’, conducted in courts in Maharashtra, revealed that majority of the judges studied agree that retired judges be appointed as Commissioners for recording evidence, which takes up a sizeable chunk of total litigation time.
According to advocate and cyber and constitutional law expert Virag Gupta, timely conclusion of court proceedings is necessary to ensure the efficacy and fairness of the judicial system.
“The Mediation Act, 2023, Commercial Courts Act, 2015, and amended provisions of Arbitration and Conciliation Act,1996, have introduced strict time limits for resolving disputes,” pointed out Mr. Gupta.
As a way forward, advocate Ajay Verma, who has worked extensively on the issues of human rights, crime, and prison reforms, said, “To deal with the huge delays of cases, if a time slot is fixed for the cases, it will help everybody, and especially in those matters such as custody cases, where someone’s liberty is involved”.
“Since there are so many cases, if one case goes on for days, then other cases don’t get heard. If a time period can be fixed for oral arguments on the main points, then it will definitely help in handling more matters,” Mr. Verma added.
