Supreme Court seeks 'qualitative' look at High Court decisions

NEW DELHI: Chief justice of India HL Dattu has asked high courts to file details of the verdicts they reach as part of efforts to undertake a "qualitative" assessment of judgments, the first time that such an initiative is being taken. Currently, the high courts only send statistics related to case disposal to the apex court.

"In order to ascertain quantitative as well as qualitative disposal of cases by hon’ble chief justice/hon’ble judges of high court, you are requested to provide" judgments delivered, Dattu said in the letter, a copy of which ET has. It has also sought the resumes of chief justices and judges in a format specified "as per (the) annexure". In the letter that was sent out last month, CJI said the data sent is currently restricted to numbers.
"As you are aware… information and statistics secretariat of the Supreme Court of India collects and compiles various judicial statistics including the data pertaining to institution, disposal and pendency of civil and criminal cases in high courts and subordinate courts under their jurisdiction," he wrote.

"The said data is only quantitative in nature." It's not entirely clear what the qualitative assessment could entail, a senior high court judge told ET. "Whether a panel will be constituted to look into this matter is not known. Also, as to whether it will play a role in the elevation of a high court judge to the apex court or not remains to be seen," the lawyer said. Under each head, the judges will have to give details of "total judgments" and "reported judgments". The latter refers to those reported in law journals.

While the letter does not elaborate on the mechanism to ascertain the "qualitative disposal" by high court judges, it mentions to "reported judgments" as one of the barometers for concluding "qualitative disposal".