Frivolous petitions waste the court’s time and achieve nothing but chaos. That has been the position of Chief Justice JS Khehar, who has used much of his time to root out time-wasting applications, reducing pendency in courts.
In one landmark move, the Supreme Court had imposed a cost of Rs 25 lakh on the petitioner for filing 64 public interest litigations. The court said they were “frivolous”. A bench of Chief Justice Khehar and Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul had also prohibited the trust from “urging a cause in public interest” across any court in India.
On August 21, the bench almost ordered the arrest of Rajeev Dahiya, chairman of the trust, when he neither sought time to pay the fine nor gave a firm assurance on how he will go about paying the amount. The fine was imposed on Dahiya “for wasting judicial time”.
On Wednesday (August 23), the petitioner (Dahiya) said before the bench of the CJI and Justices Kurian Joseph and Chandrachud: “I should get a fair hearing. I have not been heard properly.”
The CJI replied: “We will post it after my retirement and you can get whatever order you want. You can argue before some other bench.”
The petitioner said: “Your lordship, I am ready to withdraw all my cases.”
The CJI said: “After filing cases against the CJI, secretary and 64 frivolous PILs, you can’t. You have to make the payment. Which date is lucky for you? We will post it for that day. We will post it for December 5.”
—India Legal Bureau