NEW DELHI, Nov 3: India’s Chief Justice, D Y Chandrachud, asked attorneys not to ask for postponements in new cases on Friday, stating that he does not want the Supreme Court to become into a “tareekh-pe-tareekh” court. The CJI brought up the problem of attorneys requesting adjournments in new cases at the beginning of the day’s hearings, stating that in the previous two months, advocates had submitted postponement slips in 3,688 cases. “If not absolutely essential, kindly do not file the adjournment slips.The Chief Justice of India, who shared the bench with Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, declared, “I don’t want this court to be a ‘tareekh-pe-tareekh’ court.”In the well-known dialogue “Tareekh-pe-Tareekh” (repeated adjournments) from the Bollywood film “Damini,” Sunny Deol bemoaned the practise of judicial adjournments. According to the CJI, the time interval between the filing of new matters at the top court and their listing has been greatly shortened thanks to the support of lawyers’ associations. But he regretted that after being listed before the benches, attorneys request adjournments, sending a very negative message to the outside world. “I’ve seen that the time between filing and listing is getting shorter. Without the assistance of the Supreme Court Advocates-on Record Association (SCAORA) and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), we would not have been able to do this, the Chief Justice stated.We have 178 adjournment slips for November 3. The CJI stated, “This defeats the very purpose of expediting the case. Since October, there have been 150 adjournment slips for each miscellaneous day, and from September to October, 3,688 adjournment slips were circulated.”
