The biennial meeting of Commonwealth Judicial Educators was to be held next month, from November 15 to 18 in Port of Spain. (File)
Keeping with Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi’s directions to judges to avoid taking leave on working days, fellow Supreme Court judge Justice N V Ramana has declined an invite to attend a meet of judicial educators in Trinidad and Tobago.
The biennial meeting of Commonwealth Judicial Educators was to be held next month, from November 15 to 18 in Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad and Tobago. However Justice Ramana expressed his inability to participate in the programme, as the days of meeting are working days for the court, sources said.
CJI Gogoi, who took over on October 3, has repeatedly expressed concern about the mounting backlog of cases. Moving to tackle this, the CJI last week came out with some directions and asked judges not to take leave on working days, except in emergencies. He also took exception to judges attending seminars etc on working days as that would eat up precious time needed for preparing cases for the next day.
The new CJI who interacted with the Chief Justices of various High Courts through video conferencing is also learnt to have asked them to bring to the apex court’s attention any deviation from the new norms. A stickler for discipline, CJI Gogoi has also not taken kindly to frivolous PILs which have been criticised as a major reason for eating up judicial hours.
Addressing a seminar here on September 29, he expressed concern over growing pendency and said, “It has the potential of making the system irrelevant”. Explaining this, he said the accused in a criminal case gets a hearing after he has served out his sentence while in civil proceedings, the parties get judgments in the second or third generation.
Dealing with this, CJI Gogoi also said the court would be embarking on a routine of hearing pending criminal appeals continuously for a week followed by civil appeals the week after. Consequently, criminal appeals which had been pending for many years were listed for hearing in all courts last week. Civil appeals are expected to be listed for hearing once the court reopens after Dussehra recess.