A Division Bench of Justices T.S. Sivagnanam and P. Velmurugan has created a record of sorts by taking just four days to dispose of 442 out of 610 commercial tax cases listed as part of the voluntary sitting of judges at the Madras High Court Bench here during the ongoing summer vacation.
According to court sources, the two judges disposed of 252 main cases and 86 miscellaneous petitions on May 3; 79 main cases and three miscellaneous petitions on May 4; 71 main cases on May 5; and 40 main cases on May 9. All these cases had been filed in the court between 2006 and 2012 and pending since then.
Additional Government Pleader (Taxes) Raja Karthikeyan said that he was a little sceptical about the possibility of the court being able to dispose that many cases when he was told that Mr. Justice Sivagnanam had directed the High Court Registry to post all the tax cases pending in the court for long during the voluntary sitting.
“The reason for my scepticism was that questions of law on taxation had to be answered in most of the cases. However, I asked the Commercial Tax Department officials in Madurai, Tirunelveli and Tiruchi regions to be present in the court on all four days and was surprised to see the speed with which the judges disposed the cases,” Mr. Karthikeyan said.
He pointed out that Justices P.N. Prakash and R. Suresh Kumar too had disposed of considerable number of criminal cases and writ petitions respectively during their voluntary sittings. The HC decided to hold voluntary sittings following a call given by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar.
These voluntary sittings were held in addition to the vacation court sittings conducted twice a week.
