New Delhi: In its full court meeting, the Supreme Court has decided that all its 13 benches will hear every day 10 daily bail petitions and 10 matrimonial disputes in a bid to bring down the pendency of cases, Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud announced on Friday.
The exercise will continue for five weeks that the top court has before it goes for its Winter break.
“After a full court meeting, we have decided that each Bench will take up 10 transfer petitions, which are family matters, followed by 10 bail matters to dispose of all such matters before the winter vacation of the court starting from December 19,” CJI Chandrachud said, stressing that the bail matters needed to be given primacy as they pertain to personal liberty.
The bench said as of now there were 3,000 petitions pending in the SC pertaining to matrimonial cases where parties are seeking transfer of cases to a place of their convenience. The CJI said if every bench takes up 10 cases daily, then 13 benches will be able to decided 130 cases per day, i.e. 650 per week. “So at the end of five weeks, all transfer petitions will be over,” he said.
The benches will start taking up regular cases after dealing with these 20 bail and transfer petitions every day, the CJI said.
Chief Justice Chandrachud also said that he had decided to cut down the number of cases to be listed at the last moment in the supplementary list to lessen the burden on the judges who are forced to see the case files till late night.
