KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 8
The full court of the Supreme Court has decided to allow high court and Supreme Court judges to hear cases they had already heard or in which they had passed short-term interim order, interim order, or summoned case parties to join appeal proceedings. However, they cannot take up cases in which they had passed value judgement in an earlier order.
The full court has made it clear that the Supreme Court and high court judges can conduct hearing of cases in which they had earlier passed short-term interim order or interim order, but had not made such observation that could shape their opinion in the final hearing.
Till today, judges who had passed order once in any case recuse themselves from those cases.
However, in cases where high court judges had passed value judgement in their orders, the high court would try to form a different bench to hear such cases, but if a different bench cannot be formed for some reason, the same judge could hear the case again.
The apex court has also decided to hear cases of the accused who have been sent to judicial custody and have already served 50 per cent of jail time on a separate day of the week without postponing any such case.
Spokesperson for the SC Bimal Poudel told THT that the decision to allow judges to hear cases in which they had already passed an order again was meant to clear huge backlog of cases. The SC has around 29,400 cases to adjudicate. Every year, 9,000 to 10,000 cases are filed in the Supreme Court.
President of the Supreme Court Bar Association Purna Man Shakya told THT that the SC decision was also necessary as the current lottery system did not allow checks whereby cases can be stopped from being assigned to those judges who should recuse themselves from such cases.
As many cases where judges had passed an order had been assigned to the same judges, but those judges had to recuse themselves, adjudication of such cases was getting delayed, Shakya said. He added that the current changes would allow the SC and the high courts to dispose of backlogs. Shakya said allowing judges to hear particular cases again where they had not passed any value judgement earlier, would not harm the cause of justice.
It will rather help the apex court clear huge backlogs.
Shakya said when courts would go for computer-based automation system to prepare cause list (case listing), the system would automatically check against assigning cases to judges who would have to recuse themselves from such cases.
A version of this article appears in the print on November 9, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
