Supreme Court has its Summer Vacation going on. It will have a 42 days Summer break. Only Super urgent work would be done. Only the work that cannot wait till the reopening of the Supreme Court, is being done during the Summer Vacation. Most of the high Court and Civil Courts are also having a 4-week summer break either in the month of May or in the month of June. The High Court situated in the northeastern states has its break during the peak winter season i.e. December and January month.

It’s the summer. For many people, that means it’s time to take a vacation. Travel agents, airlines, and tourist spots gear up for the incoming rush. Maybe amidst the crowd is a Supreme Court judges and lawyers.

These long breaks have been a matter of debate and discussion for last many years and in the times of social media, the judiciary has to undergo heavy criticism with the fact that the pendency is piling on.

Do the judges and the lawyers need some time off? Well, for the apex court, it has become an argumentative matter. Should it have an extended vacation period? Do the judges not deserve some time off, or are the cases on the court’s docket are not too important to postpone? The role of advocates during this break.

Indian Judicial System and the Impact of the colonial era

India gained its independence in 1947 and till that time the Britishers ruled the Country for a considerable period of time. They introduced their Judicial System in India which includes the Practice and Procedure, Laws, and the Hierarchy.

Even after over seven decades since India achieved its Independence, several remnants of colonial practices and laws remain. One such practice is court vacations. It was integrated in the Indian Judicial System by the British rulers to allow their judges enough time to travel back and forth between home and work.

India gets hot during the summer, especially in north and middle India, and the English judges couldn’t handle it. They all had families back home in England and would sail to and fro. It would usually be a month to travel, a month back home, and another month to return to India. That’s three months of summer vacation. They would usually return during the monsoon season.

After the independence, the System of vacation was modified to the Indian requirements and fittings. State City Courts and High Courts have a break of about 4 weeks, which appears to be sufficient to travel back to home within the State. The Supreme Court has an additional 2-3 weeks of vacation allowing a judge coming to Delhi from far end of the country to travel home.

The Supreme Court Rules, 1950 were introduced and by virtue of those rules till 2014 the Supreme Court had an option of going for vacation for a period of 10 weeks. The Supreme Court amended its rules in 2013. In 2014 the then Chief Justice of India, RM Lodha, cut down this period to 7 weeks. He also wrote to the Chief Justices of the High Courts asking for their thoughts on the possibility of the courts operating year-round. Lodha suggested the vacation time allotted at the same time to all judges be scrapped. Instead, each judge could signify beforehand when they would take a vacation.

In 2018, a public interest litigation was filed before the Supreme Court with a prayer to cut the court vacations to reduce the court’s ever-mounting pendency. The SC works for 193 days a year, high courts for 210, and trial courts for 245. The SC usually has five vacations in its annual calendar. There’s the 45-day summer break, a 15-day winter break, and a week for Holi. It also closes for five days each for Dussehra and Diwali.

When 17 courts of the Supreme Court go on vacation, there is 1 to 2 courts that sit during this time to hear urgent cases and old matters at the same time. In the PIL it was contended that the Law Ministry should implement the recommendations of the Law Commission Report No. 221, 230, and 245 to alter the calendar so that the SC works for at least 225 days a year.

In 2017, the Supreme Court made history and set up two vacation benches to dispose of urgent cases. By this point in time, it had been a decade since the SC constituted vacation benches to hear urgent matters during the summer break. Also, over the years, the summer break was shortened by over a week, and the frequency of vacation benches and their numbers increased.

Former Chief Justice Dipak Misra broke tradition and set up vacation benches during the winter break also.

Are these vacation benches not enough to deal with the backlog of cases, or is it unreasonable to ask for the Supreme Court to work for more than 200 days a year and cut down on the summer break, given how bad the issue of pendency is?

Arguments for Vacations

Recently Former Law Minister Kiren Rijiju made a public statement advocating for the summer break taken by the Courts. Not only him but many other people have advocated the same and at the same time, it has also been criticised by a section of people in society.

Over the past several years, the SC has introduced reforms in the vacation matter. The summer break has been reduced. The question is, will scrapping the court’s summer break or curtailing it significantly solve anything? From the judge’s point of view, many of them complete pending dictations of reserved judgments and tend to non-court commitments like public meetings and training.

Vacation benches are not the B-team or judges of lower category would sit to hear the cases. As per the Schedule issued by the Supreme Court registry for the sitting of judges during the Summer break, at least 4 judges who would become Chief Justices of India in the Future will sit to preside on the benches. Previously also they’ve comprised of Chief Justices and other senior justices of the SC. They also take up important cases. In 2018, a vacation bench heard the Congress’ plea against the BJP in the wake of the Karnataka assembly elections. The bench ordered an immediate floor test to see who would form the government.

Those in favour of court vacations argue judges and lawyers are overburdened and work long hours. On average, High Court and subordinate judges have 60-70 cases listed before them each day. Evenings, nights, and weekends are often spent reading files, writing orders, and reading other judgments. With the vacancies in many High Court, the listing before judges have reached to 500-700 cases per day.

There have been judges who have promoted Junior Lawyers before their benches instead of Senior Advocates. Such socialist Judges have made their statement public to discourage the practice of senior advocates appearing before vacation benches which otherwise benefits the Judicial System in the Longer run.

Unlike many other countries, in India, most lawyers prefer oral arguments, which take a lot of time that could’ve been written down. Cutting down on holidays doesn’t really solve much and could lead to an increasing number of fatigued lawyers.

It is a system of stress management also. When a Judge or a lawyer works throughout the year solving complex legal issues and questions, the human mind requires to set it back in order.

Counter Arguments

When a Civil or Criminal Case reaches the Court, most of the time it is a question of life and death for a litigant which is required to be dealt with with a great sense of caution and responsibility. For the people who criticise the vacation, there’s no special reason why High Court and the SC need not have long vacations. It is said that Judges and Lawyers are like other professionals and should be treated as such. Most working professionals don’t get a 45-day summer break. There’s no doubt judges and lawyers work with intellectual rigour in analysing and understanding complex legal disputes. By that measure, some other professions would qualify for such breaks, but that isn’t the reality. Why the exception for the judiciary?

It is argued that where’s the proof that judges use the break to author judgments and for other administrative work? There needs to be an accountability measure in place to gauge this. In fact, there’s some evidence to the contrary. An analysis of cases and judgments about the 2022 and earlier summer break found no positive impact on judgment writing or delivery.

It is also argued against this that the entire concept of vacation, given its colonial history and context, was for English judges who couldn’t handle the Indian summer. There is no correction or upgrade to this concept, assuming the role of the term ‘vacation’ is supposedly different post-independence. Having no accountability on this matter is odd for the country’s highest constitutional authorities.

It is further said shutting down courts for several weeks does not solve the enormous backlog. Listing a large number of cases during work days and working long hours isn’t the answer. Vacation benches are fine and good, but their effect in reducing the pendency of cases isn’t much. The judiciary is a vital institution. It shouldn’t be seen as residing in an ivory tower. There are crores of cases pending in the Indian Courts.

Recently former law minister Kiren Rijiju made a statement that on the basis of the data available that on December 31, 2022, the total pending cases in district and subordinate courts was pegged at over 4.32 crore. He also said over 69,000 cases are pending in the Supreme Court, while there is a backlog of more than 59 lakh cases in the country's 25 high courts.

The lawyers who are dependent on day to day earnings have a difficult time surviving this long Summer Break. It is also argued that the new advocate face the most difficult time during this summer break. 

Share this News