Transparency within judiciary hit another low on Monday when the Supreme Court refused to share information under the RTI Act of cases reserved for judgment.
Closing the option for litigants and public spirited persons to know details of cases which are waiting endlessly for final decision even though arguments are long over, the apex court refused to interfere with a Delhi High Court decision stalling the information under RTI.
Approaching the apex court against the Delhi HC order of January 7 this year was RTI activist Commodore lokesh Batra, who wished to know whether information of such cases are available with the highest court of the land and to be supplied a copy of the same.
Dismissing the appeal by Batra, the apex Bench of Justices PC Ghose and Amitava Roy found no fault in the HC decision, which held that such information was not available with the apex court. Interestingly, when Batra had first approached the Central Information Commission (CIC) for the above information under RTI, the Delhi High Court readily supplied the list while the Supreme Court refused.
Despite CIC’s order to part with information, the Supreme Court refused to budge and filed an appeal against the CIC order of August 3, 2011. After a single judge upheld the CIC order, the SC remained adamant and filed an appeal before the Division Bench of Delhi HC that finally reversed the decision by CIC and the single judge.
Finding it strange how SC could shut litigants from seeking this basic information, advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Batra, found it hard to believe that apex court did not maintain this information. According to him, in the HC, Registrar of Supreme Court had admitted that the said information exists.
He told the apex Bench that dismissal of the appeal would go against its own decision of 2011 in Anil Rai v State of Bihar, where the top court noted with some concern the undue delay in pronouncing of judgments. It said, “Delay in disposal of the cases facilitates the people to raise eyebrows, sometime genuinely which, if not checked, may shake the confidence of the people in the judicial system.” The said judgment even laid down guidelines which set a six-month period for a judgment to be pronounced pursuant to which litigants in a particular case could approach the Chief Justice of the particular High Court complaining of delay and even seek the case transfer to another bench.