|
INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - 1st April To 15th April - 2009
SUPREME COURT RULES THAT IT IS FUNDAMENTAL FOR HIGH COURTS TO RECORD REASONS IN DISPOSING OF CASES
The Supreme Court has ruled that the High Courts have a duty and obligation to record reasons in disposing of cases.
A bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Asok Kumar Ganguly while remanding back a service matter to Allahabad High Court, noted that giving reasons was fundamental to the administration of the justice delivery system, while not giving reasons amounted to denial of justice.
Justice Pasayat, while writing an eight-page judgment for the bench, however, differed when the issue of the Supreme Court also rejecting appeals at the Special Leave Petition (SLP) stage without assigning reasons noted, ‘the attempt to draw an analogy on the power of this court under Article 136 of the Constitution of India and the practice of rejecting appeals at the SLP stage invariably without assigning reasons with the one to be exercised while dealing with writ petition has no meaning and is illogical.’ The High Court was not the final court in the hierarchy and its orders were amenable to challenge before this court, unlike the obvious position that there was no scope for any further appeal from the order made declining to grant special leave to appeal, the bench noted.
It had been on more than one occasion reiterated that the Article 136 of the Constitution did not confer any right of appeal in favour of any party as such and it was not that any and every error was envisaged to be corrected in exercising powers under article 136.
The powers of this court under Article 136 of the Constitution were special and extraordinary and the main object was to ensure that there was no miscarriage of justice. ‘That cannot be said to be the same with a writ petition,’ the bench noted.
UP State Road Transport Corporation had come to the apex court against the order of the High Court directing it to take back in service one Jagdish Prasad Gupta, who was the booking clerk with the corporation and was removed from the service on July 30, 1988 on the charges of misconduct, indiscipline and carelessness in work.
|
