High courts not listening to us, why will people? Supreme Court rues

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is a worried institution today as it finds much to its dismay that its writ does not run over some of the high courts. "We do not know whether an ordinary citizen would think of complying with the orders and directions issued by this court," said the court in an anguished and worried tone.

It was reacting after being pointed out that the Karnataka high court was dragging its feet over recruitment of judges even after SC directions to all high courts and states to quickly fill up over 2,000 vacancies to clear a monstrous backlog of nearly 3 crore cases in lower courts in the country.

A livid SC bench, headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu, minced no words in criticizing the HC's approach towards its orders. "In our view, the attitude of the HC appears to be contrary to what has been said by this court. We do not approve of the snail's pace at which the HC has acted in filling up the vacancies in so far as the district judges (direct recruitment) are concerned," it said.

The bench of Justices Dattu and Arun Mishra said: "This, in our opinion, is nothing but a deliberate and willful disobedience of the orders and directions issued by this court. If we do not get an appropriate reply/affidavit from the state governments, we will not hesitate to initiate appropriate contempt proceedings against the officers/authorities concerned."

The Supreme Court reacted with anger after amicus curiae and senior advocate Vijay Hansaria informed the bench that Karnataka HC had issued an advertisement to fill 17 vacancies of district judges on November 17, 2012. The examination was held two years later on December 11, 2014 and evaluation was completed on January 3 this year.

The HC selected only five candidates but has not yet written to the government, more than two and half years after issuing the advertisement, for appointing them as judges.