Courts in India enjoy long vacations every year. According to the 2020 Supreme Court calendar, the apex court will only have 190 working days this year, while the Bombay, Delhi, Gauhati and Manipur High Courts will work for 210 days.
Which means, despite nearly 60,000 cases pending in the SC — according to Supreme Court of India statistics — the court will have 176 non-sitting days this year. The summer vacation, which starts on May 18 will last till July 5. The court will also take breaks during the festivals — Dussehra and Diwali.
Click here to see the 2020 Supreme Court Calendar.
The act of adjourning courts for long breaks is a colonial practice. However, it is still followed, even 72 years after the independence.
Is it time to cut short court vacations?
Considering the large number of cases pending in the courts, many people argue that this practice should be stopped. In 2018, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the SC demanding the same by BJP spokesperson and SC lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. The PIL said that right to speedy justice is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21.
Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur also had proposed that the summer vacation should be used for hearing of some cases.
However, those who are in favour of large vacations say that judges need time at home for various other judicial work, including writing judgments, apart from the hearing they do in the court chambers.
Even some lawyers believe that court vacations shouldn’t be scrapped. They argue that lawyers could be called to the court for a hearing any time, so if the vacations are scrapped, they will get no rest.
Over 3 crore cases are pending in the courts across India, according to National Judicial Data Grid data. In 2010, Justice VV Rao had said that it would take 320 years for the Indian judiciary to clear all the pending cases.