Legal News

Can SC Give High Courts Administrative Instructions? Supreme Court Accepts Attorney General's Request To Consider "Larger Issue"

By - Kshitij Srivastava

The Apex Court had previously issued directives to "address the issue with respect to delay in deciding the proceedings connected to commercial disputes in the State of Uttar Pradesh." The court had complained about the delay in enforcing its judgement directing the formation of the Special Arrears Committee during the previous session.

In response to that, the Allahabad High Court filed an affidavit and reported that approximately 40,000 Execution Petitions are pending in the State of U.P., that now the execution petitions are distributed among the Judicial Officers and a judicial officer would have an average of 47 such cases before himself or herself, apart from judicial work, that between 01.05.2022 and 04.07.2022, 9678 Execution Petitions and 1373 Petitions under Section 34 of the Arbitration Act have been disposed of, and that the cases are transferred to the Additional District Judges in terms of Civil Laws (U.P. Amendment Act) 2019 and the distribution of the work has taken place in the month of May, 2022 itself.

The High Court was instructed to submit a new status report and an update on the resolution of the cases involving the commercial disputes by the panel of judges that included Justices MR Shah and BV Nagarathna.

The bench stated that the greater problem brought up by the AG would be addressed. The lawsuit has been continued until August 16, 2022.