Apex court: Do not terrorise judges with voluminous petitions

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday sent out a loud message to all client-impressing advocates: "Do not file voluminous petitions to terrorise the judges and risk getting the hearing adjourned".
Finding it tough to go through a 51-volume appeals, each running to over 100 pages, filed by the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation against a Bombay HC judgment rejecting its petition challenging the Telecom Regulatory Authority's New Tariff Order (NTO 2.0), a bench of CJI NV Ramana and Justice Surya Kant said, "The SC engaged trucks to carry these volumes of appeals to judges' residences to enable them read it and get prepared with the matter."
"You can't terrorise us by filing volumes and volumes of appeals. In this case, there are 51 volumes in one petition. You sit together and file a single short convenient volume giving a synopsis of the issue to be adjudicated," it told advocates Darius Khambatta, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, Gopal Jain and Amit Sibal, who appeared for appellants.
The bench ordered,"We direct senior counsel appearing for petitioners to make a convenience volume of all the documents and circulate the same." It adjourned the hearing to August 18.
The bench faced a similar situation in the appeals filed by Amazon and Flipkart against a decision of Karnataka HC allowing an anti-trust probe against the firms by Competition Commission of India. "Again volumes and volumes of petitions are filed. We know it is to terrorise us," it said.