As lawyer highlights removal of cases by registry, CJI says will flag many issues in farewell speech

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave on Wednesday raised the problem of deletion of cases by the registry after they are listed for hearing at the Supreme Court, Live Law reported.

The registry is the court’s administrative side that receives and processes documents after a petition is filed before listing it in front of a bench. The officials at the Supreme Court’s registry are judicial officers of the rank of a district judge.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Dave told Chief Justice of India NV Ramana that deleting cases at the moment is causing hardships to the counsels. He made the complaint after a case listed for the day was deleted by the registry.

“We read the brief till last night at 8 pm,” Dave said. “We had multiple conferences also and then that matter was deleted and this [another] case was inserted. This is incorrect and this practice of registry must be deprecated...The registry needs to be more careful.”

Responding to this, Ramana said he would talk about the matter in his farewell speech.

The chief justice will demit office on August 26. He will be replaced by Justice Uday Umesh Lalit the next day.

“There are a lot of issues which I want to flag but I don’t want to observe anything before demitting the office,” the chief justice said, according to Live Law. “So, please wait.”

This was not the first time when the deletion of a case by the registry was raised in the Supreme Court.

On August 8, Justice DY Chandrachud had expressed displeasure after a case was deleted by the registry.

“This is too much, if they [registry] are deleting they should at least tell us why they are deleting it from the board?” Justice Chandrachud had remarked. “Are we the judge or the registry?”

On August 4, Justice MR Shah had also raised questions over the practice of the Supreme Court registry deleting cases.

Also read: Why does Supreme Court list some cases instantly while others take months – even years?