By Tarunkumar Singhal, Raman Jokhakar, Chartered Accountants
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Litigants and society in general have become inured to long delays in courts. Decades-old cases no longer shock anyone. Like climate change, the deceleration of the wheels of justice is hardly discernible to the naked eye.
The Supreme Court stated that 37 years of prosecution is not sufficient in itself to conclude that the accused people have been deprived of their fundamental right to speedy trial.
If this is so in criminal cases, the record of civil courts is worse. Property and partition suits take a lifetime of visiting the courts. In a judgment delivered by the Delhi High Court last week, delays in arbitration was the main argument for quashing the award (Oil India Ltd vs Essar Oil Ltd).
The Supreme Court has dealt with this problem in one of the leading cases, ONGC vs Saw Pipes Ltd (2003). It stated that “it is for the parties to take appropriate action of selecting proper arbitrator(s) who could dispose of the matter within reasonable time fixed by them. It is for them to indicate the time-limit for disposal of the arbitral proceedings. It is for them to decide whether they should continue with the arbitrator (s) who cannot dispose of the matter within reasonable time.”
Long delays keep important issues out of sight and out of mind. For instance, some urgent questions in arbitration law have been referred to a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in the 2002 Bhatia International case, but the court has shown no haste to resolve them. Instead, it gave precedence to the problem of incorrect legal reporting mooted by an offended foreign telecom major, and spent two months over it.
There are several economic issues crying for early court decision for decades. These gross cases render the rubric of speedy trial mere rhetoric. Who remembers the appeal lying in the Delhi High Court about the attempted murder of a former Chief Justice of India? It was there for nearly four decades. The trial in the 1993 Bombay blast cases is trundling along in the special court, with no end in sight. All these will climb up the judicial ladder in due time. But remember, no grumbling, and inordinate delay will not be heard as a ground to close the dog-eared files.
