A Supreme Court bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and R Subhash Reddy told lawyers to confine oral arguments to 30 minutes and submissions on law to three pages.
29.7.2021, New Delhi
Wondering which country in the world would allow lawyers to argue a case for hours and days together, the bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and R Subhash Reddy said that time has come for lawyers to change their habits.
“We would like to be enlightened which court in the world permits lawyers to argue for days and hours together. Even in England, I have failed to find such a practice. Time has come to change the habits,” the bench said.
The observations by the court came on a petition filed by Yatin Narendra Oza, a veteran lawyer from Gujarat who was stripped of the “senior advocate” designation following contempt proceedings initiated against him by the Gujarat High Court. Oza had made distasteful remarks against the judges of the high court and was defended before the top court by senior advocates, Arvind Datar and Abhishek Manu Singhvi. His petition has been pending in the top court since August 2020.
The court directed Datar and Singhvi to take 30 minutes each and complete submissions within an hour. The Gujarat high court, the contesting party, was allotted 45 minutes while intervention applications filed in the case were told to finish submissions in 15 minutes. Even on submissions on law and citation of judgments, the bench told lawyers on both sides to file a three-page synopsis on law citing one best judgment on the point.
Imposing this discipline on lawyers, the bench said, “Many times we find a 30-page synopsis filed for a 28-page writ petition. Lawyers must understand that in this kind of a hearing, how we can justify to a litigant whose appeal is pending for 10 years that some matters are being given priority and are heard for hours together.”