Lagatar24 Desk
Mumbai, Oct 20: The plea challenging the practise of courts having lengthy vacations and how this affects the filing and hearing of cases during such vacation periods was accepted by the Bombay High Court on Thursday. The hearing will take place after the Diwali holiday.
Advocate Mathews Naedumpara brought up the issue on Thursday before a bench of Justices SV Gangapurwala and RN Ladhha.
“Milords we are not against the court vacations.. The issue is for filing of petition during vacation also we need permission from vacation bench,” he said.
The bench originally questioned the timing of the petition given that the High Court schedule was created in November of last year.
It ultimately decided to put the matter on the list for November 15.
“We came to know about this petition from the news. Okay (list on) November 15,” the bench said.
A statement that closing courts for more than 70 days for any type of vacation constitutes a violation of the fundamental rights of litigants is demanded in the plea submitted by one Sabina Lakdawala.
The petition also requested that the High Court be kept fully operational throughout the upcoming Diwali holiday by making sure that there will be an adequate number of judges available to hear and decide on all cases and by giving the registry instructions to accept all petitions without needing approval from the vacation bench.
The petitioner petitioned the High Court to do away with the colonial tradition of closing courts for vacation, which was still being mechanistically and mindlessly practised.
Lakdawala also stated that while breaks are necessary for both judges and attorneys, confining them to the weekends and gazetted holidays will be sufficient. She made it clear that her argument was not that judges and attorneys should not take vacation days and that their workloads should be increased.
The only way to ensure that the Court is operational throughout the year is to encourage judges to take vacations at certain points during the year.
