In an advice quite at odds with the government's 'Make in India' and drive to attract foreign direct investments, the Centre on Thursday advised the Supreme Court to impose heavy costs on “big, big companies” who leap frog over poor litigants and waste precious judicial time on “mundane” corporate matters.
The government was replying to the Supreme Court on a PIL filed by Chennai-based lawyer V. Vasanthakumar for setting up a National Court of Appeal (NCA) with regional benches to reduce apex court's pendency and restore it as the highest constitutional court.
Addressing a Bench led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur, the government dismissed the NCA as a “self-defeating exercise” which would only add to the tiers of appellate courts and fill the lawyers' pockets.
Instead, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi, representing the Centre's “considered view”, asked the Supreme Court to correct its own approach. He asked why the apex court allowed big corporates to jump the queue and then spend months hearing their corporate cases at the cost of the ordinary litigant who has been waiting for years.
Ultimately, the A-G said, these long hearings in corporate cases end with nobody paying for the court's time.
“Impose pre-litigation costs on these big, big, huge companies who leap frog over the undertrial prisoner and make Supreme Court spend months hearing them on mundane matters. Heavy costs will see less of them coming to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Rohatgi submitted for the Centre.
Mr. Rohatgi referred to a recent order by Justice J. Chelameswar's Bench, which slapped exemplary costs of Rs 25 lakh each on three companies - GGL, MGG and RUIAS – for wasting judicial time, while calling their litigation a classic case of "unscrupulous litigants with money power" abusing the judicial process.
The Centre's take on how the Supreme Court should look within to solve the problem of backlog comes a few days after Chief Justice Thakur became emotional in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a recent function over the “impossible burden” of work of judges. Chief Justice Thakur had asked the point of hosting Make in India and FDI investments if the country's judiciary was reeling under case backlog.
In the hearing, the Attorney General said the Supreme Court strayed away from the path the Constitution had destined for it. It had over the years, from the highest constitutional court, become just another regular court of appeal.
"Send a message that you will not take cheque bounce cases, matrimonial matters and rent cases. Only self-correction, technology and heavy costs will reduce your pendency,” Mr. Rohatgi suggested.
Referring to the A-G's submission that the Supreme Court has become just another “regular court of appeal”, Chief Justice Thakur asked him: “Tell us who made us that way?”
When Mr. Rohatgi started by blaming litigation-happy lawyers, the Chief Justice stopped him.
“What about the Union? The list of government cases in the Supreme Court is very long... Customs, Excise, services, Armed Forces... The number of your appeals will never end,” Chief Justice Thakur observed.
The Bench finally reserved for final orders the question whether the PIL should be referred to a Constitution Bench for adjudicating on the need to set up NCA.
